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This is a guide to installing jasper on GNU/Linux. We will install it from source. Also, we will put in some "extra" things in here, in order to get the new user acclimated to the command line. That is, there are commands in this guide that are NOT necessary to execute in order to accomplish the installation, but they are included here for the edification of the new user. An experienced user would not be reading this howto, after all.
When you see text that is written like this:
different text here
then, that different text means it is a command that we give to the computer using
the keyboard. For example, if we see
some_command
Then, that is exactly what we will input. You can cut and paste these, but, it is
better for a new user to type the commands out, because many of these are common
commands that you will want to become familiar with as soon as possible anyway!
First, we have to download the source code. We go to this page first: Jasper Home Page, and we then click on the navigation link there labeled "JasPer Software", as seen in the picture:
Now, we want to download version 1.701.0 of the JasPer software, so we click on the hyperlink that will start that download. This is illustrated in the following picture:
But, before we download it, we will create a directory to put it in.
Now, since this is a guide for a completely NEW user (new to GNU/Linux), we are going to "break it down" all the way, into baby steps, so...
Let's go to the command line. Let's use the konsole xterminal (or other xterminal of your choice). Go ahead and open it up now, please.
We make sure that we are in our home directory. We can be sure that we are in our
home directory by typing in the command
cd
and hitting the Enter key, of course. By default, when we open up the konsole, our
present working directory WILL be our home directory, but, if you ever want to
return there quickly, executing
cd
will do the trick!
Let's make a directory named "Mydownloads". We will use the command
mkdir Mydownloads
The Mydownloads directory is where we will do all of our work. We will download the
file jasper-1.701.0.zip to that directory. Go ahead and download the file and have
it written to that directory, when the browser prompts you for a place to where you
will save the file.
Okay, now we are going to navigate to the directory that we just made.
We will do that with the
command
cd Mydownloads
Now, new users, heads-up here. You can use "tab completion" in the BASH shell to
do less typing. How? just type in
cd Mydo
and then hit the TAB key. The rest of the command should be filled in for you
"automagically".
Okay, we are now in the directory /home/username/Mydownloads/ , where "username"
is your username on the computer system. Let's see what files we have in this
directory. We can do that by issuing the command
ls
You should see the file jasper-1.701.0.zip there.
Okay, now we will unzip the file. We do it with this command
unzip jasper-1.701.0.zip
Again, make it easy on yourself, just type in
unzip ja
and then hit the TAB key to invoke the tab completion!
We will see many files extracted from the zip archive displayed to standard output when we execute this.
Okay, now we list the files in this directory again, with the command
ls
We should see TWO listings now, the original jasper-1.701.0.zip, and a new, second one, jasper-1.701.0. This new one is a directory, which holds all of the source code files for this software, along with some documentation about it. Note: If you were to look at the file /home/username/Mydownloads/jasper-1.701.0/doc/jasper.pdf, you would see all the information that you need to install this jasper software. In general, documentation, such as a file named README or INSTALL (or both) are included in the downloaded files that you get when you do things such as we are doing here now, just for your information.
Okay, the important files are in the new directory jasper-1.701.0, so lets
navigate to that directory now, with the cd command
cd jasper-1.701.0
Now, we are going to execute the configure script, which will generate the Makefile, which will contain instructions for the gcc compiler to follow to compile the source code so that it will run on our computing machine. Different machines, with different processors, say, would have different versions of the Makefile. But, we do not have to concern ourselves with this, because the programmers who wrote this software also wrote the configure script, which will generate this Makefile "automagically" for us!
Note: *Usually* the configure script should JustWork™, but, the
documentation for this software DOES make mention that SOME users MAY have
to disable OpenGL support in the software. *IF* this is the case (that is,
if the jasper software does not execute properly [as evidenced by crashing,
or returning some error message to the screen, or freezing the display,
or generally causing great grief and havoc]),
then, one would start again, at
this point here in this procedure, and
substitute the command
./configure --disable-opengl
instead of using
./configure
But, try it first with just the
./configure
command, because if your system will be able to run the software using
the opengl libraries, then, you do want to be able to do that. 'Nuff said.
Lets go ahead and execute the configure script, with the command
./configure
This will take some time, just wait.
Next, we will use the "power steering" of the make utility to have the
gcc compiler compile the source code! We will do that with the command
make
Go ahead, and type that command in. This will take some time. You may
see some errors fly by on the screen, but do not be alarmed, because
these may not be fatal errors. The compiler is now creating executable
code from the source code that was downloaded!
As a new user, you will just assume that
the compilation was successful.
The next step is to have all of the new binaries that were just produced copied into the places on the filesystem where they are expected to be. In order to do this, though, we will have to have the power of root, because some of those places on the filesystem are not writeable by ordinary, everyday lowly users.
So, let's become root,
the super-user. We will do that by executing the command
su
and then entering the ROOT password. If no errors are returned, you are
now the root user on the system, so be VERY CAREFUL what commands you
type. Root user status is nothing to be jerking around with!
And, we copy the files to where they should be.
This is simple enough to do. We just simply type in the command
make install
Again, because of the "power steering" that the make utility provides,
we do not have to do anything, it will all be taken care of for us,
and we do not need to type any other commands to get the files copied to
where they belong!
You should STOP being the root user now, because
you have no reason to be root now. We just needed to be root for
that last command to work right. So, type
exit
to go back to being a normal, mortal user.
Okay, that should be it. We have just compiled from source the jasper
software, and it should be good-to-go, "ready to launch"!!! We can
verify that by typing
which jasper
We should see something like this:
/usr/local/bin/jasper.