Install instructions

Binary versions

MS Windows

The easiest way to get the plug-ins for MS Windows (64bit) is to use a binary version, which can be found here:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/mm09nocktntaz/

You will just need to follow the instructions in the README.txt provided in the zip-file.

GNU/linux

There are no binary packages for linux yet. But it should be no issue to compile the plug-ins from source on any recent linux distribution - see instructions below.

Note On some linux distros (like Arch Linux) the python support has been dropped in the official GIMP package! Some of the plug-ins are written in python and thus might not be working in such case.

For Arch Linux there is fortunately an AUR for GIMP with python2 support - see: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python2-gimp/

Building from source

Prerequisites

The GIMP plug-ins are written partly in C and partly in python.

To compile the plug-ins written in C you will need following libraries installed:

  • gimp >= 2.2.0 (libgimp2.0)
  • cairo
  • glib2 (libglib2.0)
  • gtk2 (libgtk2.0)

For using the python plug-ins you should have python 2.7.x installed. Linux distros should normally include it by default.

Obtain the source code

The source code for the gimp-msx-plugins can be found at:

https://gitlab.com/thecker/gimp-msx-plugins

The best way to get latest the source code is to clone the repo:

git clone https://gitlab.com/thecker/gimp-msx-plugins.git

or download the source code in form of a gzipped tarball or zip file.

Compiling under GNU/linux

Compiling under linux should be straight forward (autotools). cd into the parent directory and run the configure script:

./configure

If you add –prefix=$HOME option the configure script will try to determine your user’s local GIMP folder (does not require root privileges to install) - so below is the recommended way.

./configure --prefix=$HOME

Note: You should have launched GIMP at least once before for the current user to make sure, that the local GIMP folders are created.

To compile and install type:

make && make install

Note: If configure was not run with –prefix=$HOME you’ll probably need to run the install command with root privileges (e.g. sudo make install).

Compiling under MS Windows

Since the GIMP libraries are developed with the GNU toolchain, the easiest way to compile the source under MS Windows is probably to install MSYS2.

MSYS2 provides the MinGW (minimalist GNU for Windows - e.g. C compiler) and a suite of POSIX tools. And it also provides a pre-compiled GIMP 2.10 package for the 64-bit version - so make sure, you select the msys2-x86_64-… installer!

For perparing your build environment please follow the instruction on the GIMP wiki in the “Setting up a devel environment” section.

(Actually you only need to install the packages base-devel, git and mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain, the rest will be installed automatically in the next step)

After that you can just install the GIMP 2.10 package:

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gimp

Before compiling the gimp-msx-plugins you will most likely have to set up some environment variables so that the C-compiler (gcc) and libgimp is found by the configure script.

export PATH=$PATH:/mingw64/bin
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig

You can also add these lines to the .bash_profile file in your MSYS2 home directory to make them defined on start-up.

After that you should be able to compile the plug-ins in MSYS2:

git clone https://gitlab.com/thecker/gimp-msx-plugins.git
cd gimp-msx-plugins
./configure
make

You can now find the compiled plug-in files in the gimp-msx-plugins\src folder under your MSYS home folder.

The location of the MSYS home folder depends on the your install - if you chose the default install location it will probably be something like:

C:\msys64\home\<your_user_name>\

Copy all .exe and .py files in the src folder to the plug-ins folder of your Windows installation of GIMP.

You can find out, where the GIMP folders are located, if you launch GIMP and go to the Preferences menu in GIMP:

Edit –> Preferences –> Folders –> Plug-Ins

You will also need to copy the palettes to the corresponding folders of your GIMP installation.

The palettes (.gpl files) can be found in gimp-msx-plugins\data. Check the location of the palettes folder analogous to the plug-ins folder.

Edit –> Preferences –> Folders –> Palettes

After you have copied the plug-ins and palettes, you should be able to use the gimp-msx-plugins after you restart GIMP.