Krita, ready to run (almost)
I'm not really elated, because the hacks are dirty and the installation hassles can be significant, but I do have a binary version of Krita that may be runnable for other people. I've tested it with SuSE 9.1 and Ubuntu, and in both cases I didn't have any trouble. Your mileage will vary... And of course, because it's today's CVS snapshot, the version of Krita I've packaged shows some big holes where we're working on. CMYK is broken for now; colour profiles is half-done and may lead to crashes. You cannot clear a selection. Some tools don't do anything. Autogradients are being worked on. Most tools don't mind selections, and besides, if you move a layer, it's selection stays in situ. Work, but in progress, and that's a good thing.
Okay, these are the installation instructions. Read them.
This binary release of Krita can be installed anywhere you want. It has been tested with SuSE 9.1 and Ubuntu Hoary and did work on those distributions.
For Ubuntu (and probably most other distributions):
add the line
export KDEDIRS=/path/to/krita-cvs:$KDEDIRS
to your .bashrc. If you use tcsh, adapt accordingly.
Restart KDE, cd to /path/to/krita-cvs and type ./krita
For SuSE 9.1
SuSE has changed a lot to the startkde script, and one of the changes is that they unset KDEDIRS. Find the line
unset KDEDIRS
in /opt/kde3/bin/startkde and add AFTER that line:
KDEDIRS=/path/to/krita-cvs:/opt/kde3
Restart KDE, cd to /path/to/krita-cvs and type ./krita
Untested, but supposedly universal and a lot cleaner, if you use at least KDE 3.3.3
Add a file called .env to $KDEHOME containing the line:
export KDEDIRS=/path/to/krita/:$KDEDIRS
However, I don't have 3.3.3 yet, so I cannot confirm that.
If you have a better way for making a binary distribution of a KParts based KDE application that can be used without installing into the standard KDE location, tell me. Please!
If you want to help me with maintaining binary packages from source snapshots, please mail me and earn my undying gratitude.
If these instructions are not clear enough, please mail me with suggestions.
And now for the big secret: the place where you can download Krita:
This is not Slashdottable! Don't be a cad, don't post this link to Slashdot! I need some bandwidth for myself for the rest of the month:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/krita-cvs-current.tar.bz2
Whenever I think there's something neat completed or nearly completed, I'll post an update on Fading Memories.