a0d3f5a7b3
Monitoring of the download dir interferes with the download lifecycle management. Here are some of the observed effects: - As soon as the ZIM file is created in the download directory it is added to the library and overwrites the entry created by download management logic, thus resetting the download id associated with the book. - As a result `ContentManager::downloadCompleted()` is never called; `ContentManager::downloadCancelled()` is called instead (however, for some reason the user-observable effect is as if the download completion is normally detected and handled). Looks like this was the main culprit behind the false bug report kiwix/libkiwix#1049. - The icon of the book added a time when the file was not yet a valid ZIM file stays invalid. I am temporarily disabling this functionality so that the work on download related code is carried out in a clean room environment. Once it's complete monitoring of the download directory must be re-enabled but in a way that doesn't confuse the logic of the download state machine.
Kiwix Desktop
The Kiwix Desktop is a viewer/manager of ZIM files for GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows OSes.
Disclaimer
This document assumes you have a little knowledge about software compilation. If you experience difficulties with the dependencies or with the Kiwix library compilation itself, we recommend to have a look at kiwix-build.
Dependencies
The Kiwix Desktop application relies on many third party software libraries. The following libraries need to be available:
These dependencies may or may not be packaged by your operating system. They may also be packaged but only in an older version. The compilation script will tell you if one of them is missing or too old. In the worst case, you will have to download and compile a bleeding edge version by hand.
Libkiwix has to be compiled dynamically, the best way to have it is to use kiwix-build.
Install needed packages (on Ubuntu 18.04+):
sudo apt-get install libqt5gui5 qtbase5-dev qtwebengine5-dev \
libqt5svg5-dev qt5-image-formats-plugins aria2 \
qttools5-dev-tools qtchooser qt5-qmake \
qtbase5-dev-tools
Compilation
Once all dependencies are installed, you can compile Kiwix Desktop:
qmake .
make
qmake will use pkg-config to locate libraries. Depending on where
you've installed libkiwix (and other libraries) you may have to
update the env variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH. It can be set as follows,
for example, for x86-64 native systems:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="<...>/BUILD_native_dyn/INSTALL/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig"
You may want to simply open the kiwix-desktop project in QtCreator and
then compile the project from there (don't forget to update
PKG_CONFIG_PATH if necessary).
Compilation with Qt6
There is initial support for Qt6. Additional packages are needed:
sudo apt install qt6-base-dev qt6-base-dev-tools qt6-webengine-dev libqt6webenginecore6-bin libqt6svg6
And qmake needs to be configured to use Qt6. First confirm qmake is using the right version:
qtchooser -install qt6 $(which qmake6) # run once
export QT_SELECT=qt6 # set in environments where Qt6 builds are desired
qmake --version
produces this output:
$ qmake --version
QMake version 3.1
Using Qt version 6.2.4 in /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu
then build as normal:
qmake .
make
Installation
To install Kiwix Desktop on the system:
sudo make install
Run
To run Kiwix Desktop
kiwix-desktop
You might have to refresh the ld database before:
sudo ldconfig
If you face problems such as library not found..., add the following
environment variable:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="<...>/BUILD_native_dyn/INSTALL/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu"
Communication
Available communication channels:
- Web Public Chat channel
- Mailing list
- Slack: #android channel Get an invite
- IRC: #kiwix on irc.freenode.net
For more information, please refer to https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication.