2. Installing Zint

These instructions relate to installing Zint on a GNU/Linux machine but should be the same or similar for other POSIX compliant systems (including UNIX and BSD based systems). Installation on Windows or MacOS based system should be possible but is not covered here.

Zint is currently only available as source code. First download the source code .tar.gz file from SourceForge and unpack it. The package consists of two distinct parts: a front end which provides a command line interface, and a back end which provides an API which allows developers to integrate encoding into their own project. You will notice that the sorce code is suitably arranged into frontend and backend folders. The front end requires the back end to be installed, so the back end should be installed first.

2.1 Installing the back end

The Zint back end, libzint, requires the libpng and libz libraries. The latest version of these libraries is available from http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html. Install these first before trying to install Zint. In addition, if you require QR Code support, Zint uses libqrencode which is available from http://megaui.net/fukuchi/works/qrencode/index.en.html. If you don't need QR Code support this can be disabled during compilation.

To install libzint with QR Code support follow these steps

cd backend
make
make install

If you do not want QR Code support use the following steps

cd backend
make libzint_noqr
make install

2.2 Installing the front end

To install the front end follow these steps

cd frontend
make
make install

2.3 Testing the Installation

To test that the installation has been sucessful a shell script is included in the frontend folder. To run the test type

./test.sh

This should create numerous files showing the many modes of operation which are available from Zint. If you get the following message...

zint: error while loading shared libraries: libzint.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

try the following as root:

ldconfig