This is a short introduction or in better words: a short guide how to install latest versions of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) on a little out-dated Linux. In this case I will describe the installation of

GIMP 2.2.7 on Red Hat 9.

In the following I also give an overview of absolutely recommended additional programs and libraries since Red Hat 9's libs needed by GIMP are more or less obsolet these days or even non existing in a basic host system installation.

1. Download Sites

GIMP and GTK you will find on their homepages:

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.gtk.org/download/

The RPMs used here I got from http://www.rpmseek.com, a site where almost every RPM package you will find. Nice and clear structured site. Worth checkin!

All other tarballs (filename.tgz or filename.tar.gz or filename.bz2) I got via http://freshmeat.net. On freshmeat you can search for requested librarys as well as for programs. More and more non-unix are registered there these days.

2. Installation Rules

As you know (I hope you will) Red Hat Inc. embark its own strategy of storing libaries. Easy to handle but not even POSIX conform and especially different to other commercial Linux systems such as SuSE. To avoid inconsistencies (e.g. in the $LIB path) I decided to install all libs and programms with a given installation prefix (this means I specify the nstallation path explicitly):

./configure --PREFIX=/usr

Needless to say this does not apply to RPMs (tarballs only).

If you strictly configure all sources the way described each package will find its dependencies! I had no problem at all with these method. Don't forget to call /sbin/ldconfig after installing each program.

Some other recommendations: you have to be a super user to install. The installation procedure is always as usual:

./configure --PREFIX=/usr, make and make install

3. Avoid Problems

The biggest (and only) problem I had was to build the fontconfig package from source (some fontconfig-2.2.*tar.gz) and I was not able to capture the problem for hours so I decided to seek for a latest version RPM. As I found earlier on almost all cases binary packages of fedora core 1 are useable under Red Hat 9 without any problems. So I googled for any latest pre-compiled RPM of fontconfig and found it at http://www.rpmseek.com I mentioned above. Use of this binary seems to work properly. All other RPMs I used here are also fedora core 1 builds.

4. Installation Step by Step

It is absolutely recommended to install the packages in the described order!

First check if pkg-config is installed. If not install it e.g.:
1) pkgconfig-0.15.0.tar.gz

It is necessary to renew GTK+. This requires an update of GLIB and some other librarys:

2) glib-2.6.4.tar.gz
3) freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz
4) fontconfig-devel-2.2.1-6.1.i386.rpm
5) fontconfig-devel-2.2.1-6.1.i386.rpm
6) pango-1.8.1.tar.gz
7) atk-1.9.0.bz2
8) gtk+-2.6.7.tar.gz

To compile GIMP check the INSTALL file in the gimp-2.2.7 directory! I this case I forwent renewing jpg libs and some other. Here is the compilation list:

9) libglade-2.0.1.tar.gz
10) libgnomecanvas-2.0.5.tar.gz
11) gail-1.8.2.tar.gz
12) libgtkhtml-2.5.6.tar.gz
13) libcroco-0.6.0.tar.gz
14) librsvg-2.8.1.tar.gz
15) desktop-file-utils-0.10.tar.gz
16) libexif-0.5.12-2.rhfc1.dag.i386.rpm
17) libwmf-0.2.8.3.tar.gz
18) gimp-print-devel-4.2.5-2.i386.rpm

and last but not least install GIMP:
19) gimp-2.2.7.tar

and have fun with your new GIMP! I know there might be other ways installing GIMP on dusted Red Hat 9s but it is not subject of this guide!

Below you find the file fontconfig.pc (located in /usr/lib/pkgconfig):

prefix=/usr
exec_prefix=${prefix}
libdir=${exec_prefix}/lib
includedir=${prefix}/include

# hand made file 22-06-2005
Name: Fontconfig
Description: Font configuration and customization library
Version: 2.2.1
Libs: -L${libdir} -lfontconfig
Cflags: -I${includedir}/fontconfig