Compile without flatpak

[mlopezgva]

Hello!

I would like to test this program, but I am not using flatpak (by choice).

I don't see any binary, and I do not see any makefile so I can compile the project, only thing I've see is the build-aux/flatpak directory, but I understand this is for the flatpak packaging.

The I've been trying to install using meson, but I've installed some missing dependencies until I got to the libportal-gtk4-dev. I've read it is used primarily for flatpak apps.

Is there any way to compile the source to a "simple" binary and not have to install the flatpak environment (~500Mb) ?

Thank you. I wish I can at some point test this :-).

[andyholmes]

Hi, if you want to build with meson it's as simple as:

meson setup --prefix=/usr --libdir=lib/ _build
meson compile -C _build
meson install -C _build

Valent requires libportal and includes a meson wrap if it's not available. libportal-gtk4 is probably not necessary if you're not running in a sandbox.

[mlopezgva]

That' a good start. I am stuck on the GIO version, as it requires 2.84 and installed one is 2.80 (I'm on Linux Mint 22.2, based on Ubuntu 24). I suppose that "manually" lowering the needed version won't help, right?

---

Hmmm... I'm installing more than 400Mb of dependencies just to compile the sources (and counting... I do not program C nor usually compile from sources). My goal was not to install 2GB of Flatpak dependencies just to have a 40Mb executable, but it seems like either way I will and up wasting time and space. Installing KDEConnect seems a cleaner (and less space 'waste') option. 😞

This may end up being a great option. But the main reason using this for me (avoid all the KDE dependencies to save unnecessary space) is not met if I have to use Flatpak (which reports I need to install 2GB). So I give up, and uninstall all the dependencies I've installed to try to compile valent.

Thank you for your software and effort. If there's ever a smaller installation for this, I'll be more than willing to use it. 😃

[andyholmes]

That' a good start. I am stuck on the GIO version, as it requires 2.84 and installed one is 2.80 (I'm on Linux Mint 22.2, based on Ubuntu 24). I suppose that "manually" lowering the needed version won't help, right?

glib >= 2.84 is a requirement, yes. That's the latest stable release and Valent uses API that's new in that version.

Hmmm... I'm installing more than 400Mb of dependencies just to compile the sources (and counting... I do not program C nor usually compile from sources).

If you're building each dependency from source, yeah that's a lot to build yourself. Generally you'd just want to install the development packages (e.g. libglib2.0-dev). For the record, these are the packages I had to install in a fresh ubuntu-24.04 container:

meson
gcc
gettext
pkg-config
libglib2.0-dev            (needs >= 2.84)
gnutls-dev
libjson-glib-dev
libpeas-2-dev
libportal-dev
libtracker-sparql-3.0-dev 
evolution-data-server-dev
libebook1.2-dev
libphonenumber-dev
libgstreamer1.0-dev
libgtk-4-dev              (needs >= 4.15)
libadwaita-1-dev          (needs >= 1.6)
libpipewire-0.3-dev
libpulse-dev
desktop-file-utils

As you noticed, you'd need to build GLib 2.84 and also slightly newer versions of GTK4/Adwaita.

The only reason you ever end up with a 40mb executable, is because a program links to shared libraries instead of statically linking them (like e.g. Rust programs). So either you install the libraries on the host (to be shared between applications on the host), or you install Flatpak runtime to be shared between Flatpak applications.