libinput build instructions¶
Instructions on how to build libinput and its tools and how to build against libinput.
The build instruction on this page detail how to overwrite your system-provided libinput with one from the git repository, see see Reverting to the system-provided libinput package to revert to the previous state.
Distribution repositories for libinput from git¶
Some distributions provide package repositories for users that want to test the latest libinput without building it manually.
Note
The list below is provided for convenience. The libinput community cannot provide any guarantees that the packages in those repositories are correct, up-to-date and/or unmodified from the git branch. Due dilligence is recommended.
The following repositories provide an up-to-date package for libinput:
Please follow the respective repositories for instructions on how to enable the repository and install libinput.
Building libinput¶
libinput uses meson and ninja. A build is usually the three-step process below. A successful build requires the Build dependencies to be installed before running meson.
$> git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput
$> cd libinput
$> meson --prefix=/usr builddir/
$> ninja -C builddir/
$> sudo ninja -C builddir/ install
When running libinput versions 1.11.x or earlier, you must run
$> sudo systemd-hwdb update
Additional options may also be specified. For example:
$> meson --prefix=/usr -Ddocumentation=false builddir/
We recommend that users disable the documentation, it’s not usually required for testing and reduces the number of dependencies needed.
The prefix
or other options can be changed later with the
meson configure
command. For example:
$> meson configure builddir/ -Dprefix=/some/other/prefix -Ddocumentation=true
$> ninja -C builddir
$> sudo ninja -C builddir/ install
Running meson configure builddir/
with no other arguments lists all
configurable options meson provides.
To rebuild from scratch, simply remove the build directory and run meson again:
$> rm -r builddir/
$> meson --prefix=....
Verifying the install¶
To verify the install worked correctly, check that libinput.so.x.x.x is in the library path and that all symlinks point to the new library.
$> ls -l /usr/lib64/libinput.*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 946 Apr 28 2015 /usr/lib64/libinput.la
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Feb 1 15:12 /usr/lib64/libinput.so -> libinput.so.10.13.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Feb 1 15:12 /usr/lib64/libinput.so.10 -> libinput.so.10.13.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 204992 Feb 1 15:12 /usr/lib64/libinput.so.10.13.0
Reverting to the system-provided libinput package¶
The recommended way to revert to the system install is to use the package
manager to reinstall the libinput package. In some cases, this may leave
files in the system (e.g. /usr/lib/libinput.la
) but these files are
usually harmless. To definitely remove all files, run the following command
from the libinput source directory:
$> sudo ninja -C builddir/ uninstall
# WARNING: Do not restart the computer/X/the Wayland compositor after
# uninstall, reinstall the system package immediately!
The following commands reinstall the current system package for libinput, overwriting manually installed files.
Debian/Ubuntu based distributions:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libinput
Fedora 22 and later:
sudo dnf reinstall libinput
RHEL/CentOS/Fedora 21 and earlier:
sudo yum reinstall libinput
openSUSE:
sudo zypper install --force libinput10
Arch:
sudo pacman -S libinput
SELinux adjustments¶
Note
This section only applies to meson version < 0.42.0
On systems with SELinux, overwriting the distribution-provided package with a manually built libinput may cause SELinux denials. This usually manifests when gdm does not start because it is denied access to libinput. The journal shows a log message in the form of:
May 25 15:28:42 localhost.localdomain audit[23268]: AVC avc: denied { execute } for pid=23268 comm="gnome-shell" path="/usr/lib64/libinput.so.10.12.2" dev="dm-0" ino=1709093 scontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 tclass=file permissive=0
May 25 15:28:42 localhost.localdomain org.gnome.Shell.desktop[23270]: /usr/bin/gnome-shell: error while loading shared libraries: libinput.so.10: failed to map segment from shared object
The summary of this error message is that gdm’s gnome-shell runs in the
system_u:system_r:xdm_t
context but libinput is installed with the
context unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t
.
To avoid this issue, restore the SELinux context for any system files.
$> sudo restorecon /usr/lib*/libinput.so.*
This issue is tracked in https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/1967.
Build dependencies¶
libinput has a few build-time dependencies that must be installed prior to running meson.
Hint
The build dependencies for some distributions can be found in the GitLab Continuous Integration file. Search for FEDORA_RPMS in the variables: definition and check the list for an entry for your distribution.
In most cases, it is sufficient to install the dependencies that your distribution uses to build the libinput package. These can be installed with one of the following commands:
Debian/Ubuntu based distributions:
sudo apt-get build-dep libinput
Fedora 22 and later:
sudo dnf builddep libinput
RHEL/CentOS/Fedora 21 and earlier:
sudo yum-builddep libinput
openSUSE:
$> sudo zypper modifyrepo --enable ``zypper repos | grep source | awk '{print $5}'`` $> sudo zypper source-install -d libinput10 $> sudo zypper install autoconf automake libtool $> sudo zypper modifyrepo --disable ``zypper repos | grep source | awk '{print $5}'``
Arch:
$> sudo pacman -S asp $> cd $(mktemp -d) $> asp export libinput $> cd libinput $> makepkg --syncdeps --nobuild --noextract
If dependencies are missing, meson shows a message No package 'foo'
found
. See
this blog post here
for instructions on how to fix it.
Build dependencies per distribution¶
Warning
The package lists are autogenerated from the CI.
Fedora:
dnf install git-core gcc gcc-c++ pkgconf-pkg-config meson check-devel libudev-devel libevdev-devel doxygen graphviz python3-sphinx python3-recommonmark python3-sphinx_rtd_theme python3-pytest-xdist libwacom-devel cairo-devel gtk3-devel glib2-devel mtdev-devel diffutils valgrind
Ubuntu:
apt install git gcc g++ pkg-config meson check libudev-dev libevdev-dev doxygen graphviz python3-sphinx python3-recommonmark python3-sphinx-rtd-theme python3-pytest-xdist libwacom-dev libcairo2-dev libgtk-3-dev libglib2.0-dev libmtdev-dev
Debian:
apt install git gcc g++ pkg-config meson check libudev-dev libevdev-dev doxygen graphviz python3-sphinx python3-recommonmark python3-sphinx-rtd-theme python3-pytest-xdist libwacom-dev libcairo2-dev libgtk-3-dev libglib2.0-dev libmtdev-dev curl
Arch:
pacman -S git gcc pkgconfig meson check libsystemd libevdev doxygen graphviz python-sphinx python-recommonmark python-sphinx_rtd_theme python-pytest-xdist libwacom gtk3 mtdev diffutils
Alpine:
apk add git gcc build-base pkgconfig meson check-dev eudev-dev libevdev-dev libwacom-dev cairo-dev gtk+3.0-dev mtdev-dev bash
Conditional builds¶
libinput supports several meson options to disable parts of the build. See
the meson_options.txt
file in the source tree for a full list of
available options. The default build enables most options and thus requires
more build dependencies. On systems where build dependencies are an issue,
options may be disabled with this meson command:
meson --prefix=/usr -Dsomefeature=false builddir
Where -Dsomefeature=false
may be one of:
-Ddocumentation=false
Disables the documentation build (this website). Building the documentation is only needed on the maintainer machine.
-Dtests=false
Disables the test suite. The test suite is only needed on developer systems.
-Ddebug-gui=false
Disables the
libinput debug-gui
helper tool (see Helper tools), dropping GTK and other build dependencies. The debug-gui is only required for troubleshooting.
-Dlibwacom=false
libwacom is required by libinput’s tablet code to gather additional information about tablets that is not available from the kernel device. It is not recommended to disable libwacom unless libinput is used in an environment where tablet support is not required. libinput provides tablet support even without libwacom, but some features may be missing or working differently.
Building against libinput¶
libinput provides a
pkg-config file.
Software that uses autotools should use the PKG_CHECK_MODULES
autoconf
macro:
PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBINPUT, "libinput")
Software that uses meson should use the dependency()
function:
pkgconfig = import('pkgconfig')
dep_libinput = dependency('libinput')
Software that uses CMake should use:
find_package(Libinput)
target_link_libraries(myprogram PRIVATE Libinput::Libinput)
Otherwise, the most rudimentary way to compile and link a program against libinput is:
gcc -o myprogram myprogram.c ``pkg-config --cflags --libs libinput``
For further information on using pkgconfig see the pkg-config documentation.