Installing digikam from source on Slamd64/Slackware

Last year, I bought digital camera, Canon Powershot A430, but, I never used my camera (read: download the images to PC) in Linux because Slamd64/Slackware could not detect it automatically. Today, finally .... the camera can be detected automatically so that I can download the images from that camera to PC using digikam. The software, digikam, and its dependencies has been installed by compiling them from source. I don't use Slackware's tgz because my system is x86_64 and, also, I prefer to install from source rather than install using any package management.

First step, I downloaded all sources that I needed:

• exiv2-0.15
• jasper-1.900.1
• libgphoto2-2.4.0
• libkdcraw-0.1.1
• libkipi-0.1.5
• libkexiv2-0.1.5
• sqlite-3.4.2
• digikam-0.9.2

Second step, I compiled and installed them one by one with the order same as that of I downloaded. There're some notes:

• I added the option "--enable-shared" (the default is static). If not being added, digikam could not detect libjasper.
  
• people can use specific driver when compiling libgphoto2 using option "--with-driver= ...." in configure. The default is all. I chose same as the default.
• I used the option "--with-tcl=/usr/lib64" in configure before compiling sqlite. Without that option, the configure script could not find tcl in my system.

After installing digikam, I got a problem that the digikam could not detect my camera. There is an answer from denic's blog (http://makassar-slackers.org/node/74) that I have to edit file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules in section # libusb device access; add , MODE="0666" after the text SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'X=%k X=$${X#usbdev}; B=$${X%%%%.*}; D=$${X#*.}; echo bus/usb/$$B/$$D'", SYMLINK+="%c"
Next step, I stopped HAL, messagebus, and udev services, then, I started those service again.

After all step ... digikam can detect my camera and download the images easily in PTP mode.


Note that, by default, Slackware/slamd64 is not activating HAL service. If you activate HAL service, you will see the window below: