Linux

This page details instructions for compiling RawTherapee on GNU/Linux systems. There are also instructions for compiling on Windows and macOS.

When in doubt, join us on IRC or in the Forum and ask a human!

Dependencies

To compile RawTherapee your system will need a set of tools and code libraries from other programs. These are called dependencies, and here is a list of them for the latest version of RawTherapee:

Build-time dependencies for RawTherapee:

Package	Version	URL
CMake	cmake>=2.8.8	https://cmake.org/
EXIV2	exiv2>=0.19	http://www.exiv2.org/
EXPAT	expat>=2.1.0	https://libexpat.github.io/
FFTW3	fftw>=3.2.2	http://fftw.org/
GCC	gcc>=4.9	https://gcc.gnu.org/
GLIB2	glib-2.0>=2.24	https://www.gtk.org/
GLIBMM	glibmm-2.4>=2.24	https://www.gtkmm.org/
GTK+	gtk+-3.16 < 3.24.0	https://www.gtk.org/
GTKMM	gtkmm-3.16	https://www.gtkmm.org/
JPEG	libjpeg>=6b	https://libjpeg-turbo.org/ https://jpegclub.org/ https://www.ijg.org/
LCMS2	lcms>=2.6	http://www.littlecms.com/
LENSFUN	lensfun>=0.2	http://lensfun.sourceforge.net/
LIBCANBERRA	libcanberra>=0.29	http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libcanberra/ (Linux only)
LIBIPTCDATA	libiptcdata>=1.0.2	http://libiptcdata.sourceforge.net
PNG	libpng>=1.2.44	http://www.libpng.org/
librsvg	librsvg>=2.40	https://github.com/GNOME/librsvg
SIGC	sigc++-2.0	https://github.com/libsigcplusplus/libsigcplusplus
TIFF	libtiff>=4.0.4	http://libtiff.org/
ZLIB	zlib>=1.2.3	http://www.zlib.net/

In order to install all these dependencies, you will need to open a console and paste the code from the appropriate section into the console.

The code snippets below list dependencies for the latest RawTherapee code which requires GTK3. We dropped support for GTK2 with release "5.0-r1-gtk2" in February 2017. If you use a modern distribution, just copy and paste the code snippets as they are. If you're on an old distribution without the required GTK3 support, then refer to the archived GTK2 article, then checkout and compile the obsolete 5.0-r1-gtk2 tag.

Arch/Manjaro

Current versions of Arch and Manjaro work well out of the box. Refer to the GTK2 article if compiling on a version older than 17.1.12.

sudo pacman -S --needed cmake exiv2 expat fftw glib2 glibmm gtk3 gtkmm3 lcms2 lensfun libcanberra libiptcdata libjpeg-turbo libpng librsvg libsigc++ libtiff zlib

Proceed to Compilation.

CentOS

CentOS 7 has very outdated packages and requires extra steps to install a recent GCC, git, lensfun and libtiff. The steps below were verified to work in CentOS 7.4.1708, but proceed at your own risk.

GCC >=4.9.3:

sudo yum update
sudo yum install cmake git
sudo yum install centos-release-scl
sudo yum install devtoolset-7-gcc*
scl enable devtoolset-7 bash
source /opt/rh/devtoolset-7/enable

git >=2.7:

sudo yum install http://opensource.wandisco.com/centos/7/git/x86_64/wandisco-git-release-7-2.noarch.rpm

lensfun:

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

libtiff >=4.0.4:

sudo yum install ninja-build
mkdir ~/programs && cd ~/programs
wget http://download.osgeo.org/libtiff/tiff-4.0.9.tar.gz
tar zxvf tiff-4.0.9.tar.gz
mkdir tiff-4.0.9/libtiff-build && cd tiff-4.0.9/libtiff-build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_DOCDIR=/usr/share/doc/libtiff-4.0.9 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -G Ninja ..
ninja-build
sudo ninja-build install

Install the other dependencies:

sudo yum install curl expat-devel fftw-devel gtk3-devel gtkmm30-devel lcms2-devel lensfun-devel libcanberra-devel libiptcdata-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel libpng-devel librsvg2-devel zlib-devel

Symlink libatomic:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libatomic.so.1 /usr/lib64/libatomic.so

As you proceed to the next step - compilation - you will need to edit the build-rawtherapee script and add these three lines to the CMake section near the end of the file, for example after the "-DWITH_BENCHMARK" line before the "$HOME" line:

    -DTIFF_INCLUDE_DIR="$HOME/programs/tiff-4.0.9/libtiff" \
    -DTIFF_LIBRARY="$HOME/programs/tiff-4.0.9/libtiff-build/libtiff/libtiff.so" \
    -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-Wno-deprecated -Wno-parentheses" \

Proceed to Compilation.

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/elementary OS

Current versions of these distributions work well out of the box. Refer to the GTK2 article if compiling on Ubuntu older than 16.04.

Ubuntu >=16.10, Mint >=18.3, elementary OS >=0.4.1

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential cmake curl git libcanberra-gtk3-dev libexiv2-dev libexpat-dev libfftw3-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev libiptcdata0-dev libjpeg-dev liblcms2-dev liblensfun-dev libpng-dev librsvg2-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libtiff5-dev zlib1g-dev

Proceed to Compilation.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake curl git libcanberra-gtk3-dev libexiv2-dev libexpat-dev libfftw3-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev libiptcdata0-dev libjpeg8-dev liblcms2-dev liblensfun-dev libpng12-dev librsvg2-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libtiff5-dev zlib1g-dev

Proceed to Compilation.

Fedora

Current versions of Fedora work well out of the box. Refer to the GTK2 article if compiling on a version older than 22.

sudo dnf install cmake curl expat-devel fftw-devel gcc-c++ git gtk3-devel gtkmm30-devel lcms2-devel lensfun-devel libatomic libcanberra-devel libiptcdata-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel libpng-devel librsvg2-devel libtiff-devel zlib-devel

Proceed to Compilation.

Gentoo/Sabayon

Sabayon users should use the same dependencies as for Gentoo, but instead of sudo emerge -uva use sudo equo install sys-devel/gcc dev-vcs/git.

sudo emerge -uva dev-cpp/gtkmm:3.0 dev-libs/expat dev-util/cmake media-gfx/exiv2 media-libs/lcms media-libs/lensfun media-libs/libcanberra media-libs/libiptcdata media-libs/libjpeg-turbo media-libs/libpng gnome-base/librsvg media-libs/tiff net-misc/curl sci-libs/fftw sys-libs/zlib x11-libs/gtk+:3

Proceed to Compilation.

openSUSE

The only supported versions of openSUSE are Leaf 15.0 and Tumbleweed. Serious compilation issues can be expected with older versions. Refer to the GTK2 article if compiling on a version older than 42.1.

sudo zypper cmake gcc gcc-c++ gtk3-devel gtkmm3-devel liblcms2-devel fftw3-devel libitpcdata-devel librsvg-devel libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel libcanberra-gtk3-devel

Afterwards, lensfun has to be installed manually:

wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/lensfun/files/0.3.2/lensfun-0.3.2.tar.gz
tar xvf lensfun-0.3.2.tar.gz
cd lensfun-0.3.2.tar.gz
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
sudo make install

Proceed to Compilation.

Compilation

There are two general ways you can compile RawTherapee: either use the automatic Bash script which compiles RawTherapee for you (recommended), or do so manually.

The Automatic Way

This is the recommended way of compiling RawTherapee as it is fast, simple and fool-proof. It relies on a Bash script which downloads the latest RawTherapee source code and compiles it in a way which is optimized for your CPU. The compiled builds are ready for use. The script does not check for build-time dependencies, so be sure to read the Dependencies section before using the script. The compiled builds are standalone, meaning that you can keep several versions of RawTherapee at the same time simply by renaming the build folders so that creating a new build does not overwrite the previous build, which happens by default.

Run the script as a normal user, not as root!

Open a terminal, get the script, make it executable, and run it:

cd ~
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Beep6581/RawTherapee/dev/tools/build-rawtherapee -O build-rawtherapee
chmod +x build-rawtherapee
./build-rawtherapee

If everything goes well, the script will terminate with the message, "To run rawtherapee type: ...".

To update RawTherapee if you previously compiled it using this script, just re-run the script. That's it.

You have finished, RawTherapee is ready for use. You can skip the "Manual Way" section.

The Manual Way

The recommended way of compiling RawTherapee is by using the automatic script - see Compilation: The Automatic Way. If you want to learn how to compile manually, read on.

In order to keep your "home" folder clean when manually compiling multiple programs (i.e. when not using your distribution's package manager) and for this manual compilation tutorial to maintain compatibility with the automatic compilation script, you will create the folder ~/programs/ which will contain all RawTherapee-related source code in the ~/programs/code-rawtherapee folder, and the compiled build in the ~/programs/rawtherapee folder. You can use the same scheme when compiling other programs.

Clone the source

First, you need to clone RawTherapee's source code repository. Bring up your console and run this:

mkdir -p ~/programs
git clone https://github.com/Beep6581/RawTherapee ~/programs/code-rawtherapee
cd ~/programs/code-rawtherapee

Choose a branch

• Features are developed on their own feature branches.
• Development happens in the dev branch. Feature branches are merged into the dev branch when they're ready. The dev branch is unstable.
• Releases are tagged in the releases branch.

Checkout the latest tag if you want the most stable code. To see all available tags, type:

git tag

Checkout the dev branch or some other feature branch if you want to test the latest bleeding-edge code. To see all available branches, type:

git branch -a

Checking out is done via the "git checkout" command. To checkout a tag or a branch, type:

git checkout <tag or branch>

RawTherapee uses GTK+ for the user interface and requires GTK+ version 3.16 or newer. If your system does not support version 3.16 or newer then you must checkout the 5.0-r1-gtk2 tag. Our GTK2 support has officially ended on 2 February 2017 - refer to the archived GTK2 article, and update your system.

Compiling old versions of RawTherapee will fail on a modern system, as you will be missing the old dependencies.

Compile RawTherapee

Now you will make an out-of-source compilation of RawTherapee, it will be built into the ~/programs/code-rawtherapee/build/release folder, and then you will move this folder to ~/programs/rawtherapee

CMake

There are a few compilation settings you need to be aware of, you will pass these to CMake using the -D option as described below:

BUILD_TYPE

One of: release (default), relwithdebinfo or debug.

This controls whether the build will favor faster execution time or more verbose debugging output.

The "debug" and "relwithdebinfo" builds will let you get a useful stack-backtrace if RawTherapee crashes while running through GDB which you can then submit to us so we can find the problem and fix it. The "debug" build is the slowest but generates the most detailed information. The "relwithdebinfo" build is almost as fast as a "release" build and generates often sufficient information, though not as detailed as a "debug" build. The "release" build will not provide any useful information when it crashes, but does contain many speed optimizations resulting in a program that works several times faster than the "debug" build would. For normal use, make a "release" or "relwithdebinfo" build. If you find a reproducible bug, then make a "debug" build and send us a stack-backtrace (or fix it yourself and send us the patch!). We prefer stack backtraces from debug builds than from relwithdebinfo ones.

To make a "release" type build, set: -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="release"

USE_OLD_CXX_ABI

ON or OFF (default).

When compiling a program, one must use the same conventions as those used by the libraries which that program relies upon, otherwise compilation (linking) will fail. Generally one does not need to concern oneself with this, but we are now at a time when GCC4 is being phased out by GCC5, each by default using a convention incompatible with the other, and so this issue is relevant. If the libraries on your system have been compiled using GCC5, they probably use a standard called C++11. This means that your RawTherapee build must use the same standard, which is the case by default. However, if despite using GCC5 your libraries were built using the older C++03 standard, then RawTherapee must be set to use the same, and this is when you would set "USE_OLD_CXX_ABI" to "ON".

To enable USE_OLD_CXX_ABI, set: -DUSE_OLD_CXX_ABI="ON"

CACHE_NAME_SUFFIX

The CACHE_NAME_SUFFIX options sets the suffix of the cache and config folder names the compiled RawTherapee build will use. See the File Paths article for an explanation of what those are.

For stable releases (if you checkout the "releases" branch) use -DCACHE_NAME_SUFFIX=""

For development builds (if you checkout the "dev" branch or any branch other than "releases") use -DCACHE_NAME_SUFFIX="5-dev"

PROC_TARGET_NUMBER

From 0 (default) to 9.

The PROC_TARGET_NUMBER option sets which CPU type to optimize for.

If building for yourself, use "2". It means "native", so the optimizations will be automatically detected for your CPU and RawTherapee will perform as fast as possible on your CPU. It might not run at all on older or other CPU architectures.

If building for distribution (for other people), use "1". It means "generic", so only optimizations supported by most CPUs will be used, meaning the build can be downloaded and used by anyone, though it won't benefit from the best optimizations possible for the user's CPU.

For more info, see the file "ProcessorTargets.cmake" in the cloned repository.

To make a build using "native" optimizations, set: -DPROC_TARGET_NUMBER="2"

BUILD_BUNDLE

ON or OFF.

Forced to "ON" for Windows and macOS. Optional in Linux where it is "OFF" by default.

If set to ON, the program will be built into the DATADIR folder, otherwise it will be installed relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX which would typically be system-wide.

BUNDLE_BASE_INSTALL_DIR

Use an absolute path.

The program will be built into this folder.

For example, set it to: -DBUNDLE_BASE_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/programs/rawtherapee"

If it is not set, the default is to use ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE}

LENSFUNDBDIR

Unset by default.

The LENSFUNDBDIR option permits to locate the lensfun database in the specified directory. It can be unset, absolute or relative.

When unset, Lensfun uses its own logic to find the database. This is the recommended option if you have Lensfun installed system-wide and want to use it.

You can set it to a relative or absolute path if you want to use a custom lensfun database.

If building a bundle, it is relative to the bundle's root folder, otherwise it is relative to DATADIR, i.e. ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/share/rawtherapee

OPTION_OMP

ON (default) or OFF.

Build with OpenMP support when enabled, which enables multithreading and makes RawTherapee much faster.

WITH_LTO

ON or OFF (default).

Build with link-time optimizations when enabled, which may make RawTherapee run a little faster.

WITH_PROF

ON or OFF (default).

For debugging purposes. Generate extra code to write profile information suitable for the analysis program gprof.

WITH_SAN

OFF (default) or one of various other options.

For debugging purposes. Allows enabling various sanitizers to help detect program issues.

See GCC manual's Program Instrumentation Options chapter for more information.

WITH_SYSTEM_KLT

ON or OFF (default).

Build using system KLT library when ON, otherwise use KLT files bundled with RawTherapee.

The Kanade–Lucas–Tomasi (KLT) feature tracker is used by the Auto Distortion Correction tool.

WITH_BENCHMARK

ON or OFF (default).

Build with timing functions enabled to benchmark performance.

Make

Find out how many threads your CPU supports. This only influences the compilation speed, it has no influence over how fast the compiled RawTherapee build runs. To find out how many threads your CPU supports, run this in a terminal:

nproc --all

It will return a number. Use this number for the --jobs parameter below.

Compile:

cd ~/programs/code-rawtherapee
mkdir build
cd build

cmake \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="release"  \
    -DCACHE_NAME_SUFFIX="5-dev" \
    -DPROC_TARGET_NUMBER="2" \
    -DBUILD_BUNDLE="ON" \
    -DBUNDLE_BASE_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/programs/rawtherapee" \
    -DOPTION_OMP="ON" \
    -DWITH_LTO="OFF" \
    -DWITH_PROF="OFF" \
    -DWITH_SAN="OFF" \
    -DWITH_SYSTEM_KLT="OFF" \
    ..

make --jobs=4
make install

Run RawTherapee

To run RawTherapee:

~/programs/rawtherapee/rawtherapee

Or to run the CLI version:

~/programs/rawtherapee/rawtherapee-cli

The source code repository is in ~/programs/code-rawtherapee and the compiled program is in ~/programs/rawtherapee

You can safely delete ~/programs/code-rawtherapee if you so wish. The compiled program will still work, but then you will have to redo all the above steps if you want to update. Rather, leave the repository intact so that you can do the next step in a week or a month's time when you want to update.

Update RawTherapee

Every time you want to update RawTherapee to the latest code available, just do the following:

cd ~/programs/code-rawtherapee
git pull

Then repeat the Make step above.

When updating, you can re-use the build folder from last time to avoid having to recompile things which have not changed, to make the whole process faster. CMake should automatically detect changes. However, there are situations when compilation may fail when re-using an old build folder - typically that might happen when hopping between very different branches. If that happens, just delete the build folder, then proceed with the steps in the "Make" section.