Installation

Latest Update:

Index

  • About
    • Compatibility
    • Thanks
  • Repositories
    • Installing PDF Chain from PPA (Ubuntu Linux)
    • Installing PDF Chain from AUR (Arch Linux)
      • Installing the PDFtk from AUR
  • Installing PDF Chain from source
    • Dependencies
    • Compiling a PDF Chain release
    • Compiling PDF Chain from Git
  • Installing the PDFtk from sorce

About

PDF Chain is just a GUI for the PDF Toolkit (PDFtk). PDF Chain generates a command for the PDFtk from the GUI settings and executes it on the system. Therefore PDF Chain requires the right version of the PDFtk installed on the system.

Compatibility

  • PDF Chain 0.55 to 0.123 is compatible with the PDFtk 1.40 to 1.43
  • PDF Chain 0.3.1 to 0.3.5 is compatible with the PDFtk 1.44
  • PDF Chain from 0.4.0 is compatible with the PDFtk from 1.45

Thanks

Special thanks to Liviu Andronic and in the past Günther Bauer for their great work with the Ubuntu PPA.
Great thanks to Johann Felix Soden for his dedicated help fixing bugs as well as distributing and maintainig PDF Chain for Ubuntu and Debian Linux.
Great thanks to all distributors, maintainers and testers!

Repositories

Installing PDF Chain from PPA

If you are using the Ubuntu Linux distribution, you can add my Personal Package Archive (PPA) at your package management. It will install all dependencies, also the right version of the PDFtk, if it is available.
The PDF Chain PPA comes without any warranty!

  • $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pdfchain-team/ppa
  • $ sudo apt-get update
  • $ sudo apt-get install pdfchain

Installing PDF Chain from AUR

If you are using the Arch Linux distribution, you can use the Arch User Repository (AUR) for installing PDF Chain. PDF Chain depends on the PDFtk! So you should install the PDFtk first.
The PDF Chain AUR comes without any warranty! Check the PKBUILD file.

  • $ wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pd/pdfchain/pdfchain.tar.gz
  • $ tar xfz pdfchain.tar.gz
  • $ cd pdfchain
  • $ makepkg
  • # pacman -U pdfchain.pkg.tar.gz

Installing the PDFtk from AUR

For compiling the PDF Toolkit on Arch you have to compile and install the GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ) at first.
Compiling the GCJ may take some hours!

  • # wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gc/gcc-gcj/gcc-gcj.tar.gz
  • # tar xfz gcc-gcj.tar.gz
  • # cd gcc-gcj
  • # makepkg
  • $ pacman -U gcc-gcj-version.pkg.tar.gz
  • # wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pd/pdftk/pdftk.tar.gz
  • # tar xfz pdftk.tar.gz
  • # cd pdftk
  • # makepkg
  • $ pacman -U pdftk-version.pkg.tar.gz

Installing PDF Chain from source

PDF Chain is a program for Unix-like systems. It's written in C++ programming language, using the GTKmm library. Autoconf is used for generating configure scripts and the GNU Compiler Collection for compiling.

Dependencies

For compiling you have to install the C++ compiler and some development libraries. Most libraries depending directly on the gtkmm library. On the most distributions you only have to install this one explicit and the depending libraries will be installed automatically.

  • atkmm-1.6
  • glibmm-2.4
  • gtkmm-3.0
  • sigc++-2.0
  • libstdc++6
  • libc6
  • libgcc1

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  • # apt-get install g++ libgtkmm-3.0-dev

Fedora 17 & 18

  • # yum install gcc-c++ gtkmm30-devel

Compiling a PDF Chain release

Get the release from the download section. Check the md5sum for integrity of the tarball.

  • $ md5sum pdfchain-<version>.tar.gz
  • $ tar xfz pdfchain-<version>.tar.gz
  • $ cd pdfchain-<version>

Now you can configure the environment and compile. After finishing the compilation you find the binary at src/. For installing on system you have to become root.

  • $ ./configure
  • $ make
  • # make install

Compiling PDF Chain from Git

In case of using the Git repository you have to install Git, Autoconf and the Libtool.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  • # apt-get install git autoconf libtool

Fedora 17 & 18

  • # yum install git autoconf libtool

Clone the Git repository as follows and change into the directory:

  • $ git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/pdfchain/code pdfchain
  • $ cd pdfchain

Now you can generate the configure script, configure the environment and compile. After finishing the compilation you find the binary at src/. For installing on system you have to become root.

  • $ autoreconf --install
  • $ ./configure
  • $ make
  • # make install

Compiling the PDFtk from source

Download the sourcecode of the PDFtk release and follow the compiling instructions on the project page.

PDFtk 1.45 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  • # apt-get install libgcj12-dev
  • $ wget http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk-1.45-src.zip
  • $ unzip pdftk-1.45-src.zip
  • $ cd pdftk-1.45-dist/pdftk
  • $ make -f Makefile.Debian
  • # make install -f Makefile.Debian

PDFtk 1.45 on Fedora 18

  • # yum install java-1.5.0-gcj libgcj-devel
  • $ wget http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk-1.45-src.zip
  • $ unzip pdftk-1.45-src.zip
  • $ cd pdftk-1.45-dist/pdftk
  • $ make -f Makefile.Redhat
  • # make install -f Makefile.Redhat