Installation from source code

Installation from source code is required if you want the latest features, if the past release is getting old, if you want to participate in improving Siril or not use all the dependencies.

Getting the source code

The source code is stored on a git repository, which you can download with this command the first time:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://gitlab.com/free-astro/siril.git

And update it the following times with these commands in the base siril directory:

git pull
git submodule update --recursive

Dependencies

Siril depends on a number of libraries, most of which should be available in your Linux distribution or package manager of choice. The names of the packages specific to operating systems are listed in each section below. Mandatory dependencies are:

  • gtk+3 (Graphical user interface library), at least version 3.20.

  • adwaita-icon-theme (icons) to support gtk's look and feel.

  • cfitsio (FITS images support).

  • fftw (Discrete Fourier Transform library).

  • gsl (The GNU Scientific Library), version 1 or 2 starting with release 0.9.1 or SVN revision 1040.

  • OpenCV and a C++ compiler for some image operations.

Note

Even if Siril can run in console since version 0.9.9, it is still linked against the graphical libraries, so you still need GTK+ to compile and run it.

Optional dependencies are:

  • openmp for multithreading. Although optional, this dependency is highly recommended as the performance will be much better. The flag of this option is set to true by default. That means if openmp is not installed on your machine, you must add -Dopenmp=false in the meson setup.

  • libraw, libtiff, libjpeg, libpng, libheif for RAW, TIFF, JPEG, PNG and HEIF images import and export. The libraries are detected at compilation-time.

  • FFMS2 for film native support as image sequences. It also allows frames to be extracted from many kinds of film, for other purposes than astronomy. Versions < 2.20 have an annoying bug. It is recommended to install the latest version.

  • ffmpeg (or libav), providing libavformat, libavutil (>= 55.20), libavcodec, libswscale and libswresample for mp4 sequence export.

  • gnuplot for photometry graph creation (not required at compilation time).

  • wcslib for world coordinate system management, annotations and the photometric color calibration.

  • libconfig (Structured configuration files support), used to read the configuration file from versions up to 1.0, only used to get old settings now.

  • libjson-glib for update checking (useless if you build an non-released version).

  • Exiv2 to manage image metadata.

  • libcurl OR glib-networking with its HTTP backend for online operations like update checks, astrometry and photometry requests.

Build dependencies

To install from source code, you will have to install the base development packages:

git, autoconf, automake, libtool, intltool, pkg-tools, make, cmake, gcc, g++

The compilers gcc and g++ from this list can be replaced by clang and clang++ (we use them for development), probably others as well.

The autotools packages (autoconf, automake, probably some others) can be replaced by meson.

Generic build process

Siril can be compiled either using autotools or meson.

Meson

The recommended way is to use meson and ninja:

meson setup _build --buildtype release

cd _build
ninja
ninja install

To disable some dependencies or features, use meson options -Dfeature=false or -Denable-feature=yes depending on the case.

Table below lists all configurable options.

Option

Type

Value

Choices

Description

relocatable-bundle

combo

platform-default

[ 'yes', 'no', 'platform-default' ]

build with resources considered bundled under the same prefix

openmp

boolean

true

N/A

build with OpenMP support

json_glib

boolean

true

N/A

build with json glib support

exiv2

boolean

true

N/A

build with exiv2 support

libraw

boolean

true

N/A

build with LibRaw support

libtiff

boolean

true

N/A

build with TIFF support

libjpeg

boolean

true

N/A

build with JPEG support

libpng

boolean

true

N/A

build with PNG support

libheif

boolean

true

N/A

build with HEIF support

ffms2

boolean

true

N/A

build with FFMS2 support

ffmpeg

boolean

true

N/A

build with FFmpeg support

enable-libcurl

combo

platform-default

[ 'yes', 'no', 'platform-default' ]

Use libcurl instead of GIO

libconfig

boolean

false

N/A

build with libconfig support

criterion

boolean

false

N/A

build with criterion support

wcslib

boolean

true

N/A

build with WCSLIB support

Autotools

The autotools ways is well known in the unix world, once the source code has been downloaded and the prerequisites have been installed, the general way to build it is as such:

./autogen.sh
make
make install

possibly with superuser privileges for the last line.

You may want to pass specific options to the compiler, for example like that if you want optimisation and installation in /opt instead of the default /usr/local:

CFLAGS='-mtune=native -O3' ./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt

To launch Siril, the command name is siril or siril-cli.

Installation on Debian-like systems

You may want to build a .deb package instead of using a non-packaged version, in that case see this help. In particular, to install dependencies, you can use the command:

apt build-dep siril

Otherwise, here is the list of packages for the current version:

  • Packages required for the build system:

autoconf automake make gcc g++ libtool intltool pkg-config cmake

  • List of packages for mandatory dependencies:

libfftw3-dev libgsl-dev libcfitsio-dev libgtk-3-dev libopencv-dev
libexiv2-dev

  • List of packages for optional dependencies:

wcslib-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff5-dev
libraw-dev gnome-icon-theme libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev
libswscale-dev libswresample-dev libjson-glib-dev libheif-dev

for film input (AVI and others) support:

libffms2-dev

Installation on Arch Linux

Two packages are available on AUR: siril and siril-git. Download the PKGBUILD or the repository, install dependencies, run makepkg to build the package and pacman -U to install it.

Dependencies (mandatory and a few optional):

pacman -S base-devel cmake git intltool gtk3 fftw cfitsio gsl opencv
exiv2 libraw wcslib

Build Failures

Every commit to Siril git is automatically built in a standard build environment for Linux, Windows and MacOS using the gitlab CI infrastructure. This means that we have high confidence that the master branch, as well as tagged releases, will build successfully given a correctly set up build environment with the necessary dependencies installed.

If you experience a build failure it is likely that this indicates a problem with your build environment or incorrectly installed dependencies - remember many distributions require separate installation of development packages that contain the necessary header files. Check the CI report for the git commit you are trying to build. In the unlikely event that there is a build failure shown, rest assured the team is working to fix it. Otherwise, if the CI pipeline shows green ticks, you will need to review and fix any issues with your own build environment.

If you still believe you have found a build issue that has not been flagged by the CI pipeline - for example if you're building on a different platform such as BSD that the developers don't regularly use - then feel free to raise an issue on gitlab.

Note that issues should only be raised against the master branch or tagged releases. If you are testing new features in merge requests, please provide feedback in comments against the relevant merge request.