Ubuntu Installation Experience

Updated: 2022-06-27

Since PyMuPDF-1.20.0 (released 2022-06-17), there is no need to manually download and build MuPDF when building PyMuPDF.

• Building PyMuPDF is the same on all systems, for example pip install pymupdf or ./setup.py install.
• For details, please see: https://pymupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

Updated: 08 Jul 2021

MuPDF 1.18.0, PyMuPDF 1.18.14

Instructions

This is a list of steps that should lead to a successfully installed PyMuPDF.

• Get the MuPDF source from the site wget https://mupdf.com/downloads/archive/mupdf-1.14.0-source.tar.gz and decompress it (latest version as of writing. Others available here: https://mupdf.com/downloads/archive/).
• MuPDF also has a repository on GitHub. This, however, is the latest development version! Do not use it: it is probably not be compatible with the current PyMuPDF.
• Set environment variables: export CFLAGS="-fPIC" (on CentOS 5, export CFLAGS="-fPIC -std=gnu99" to resolve errors about missing a definition for NAN symbol in the thirdparty/mujs folder). If you do not set the CFLAG -fPIC, you may also run into a linking error when you run setup.py.
• Run the initial make: sudo make HAVE_X11=no HAVE_GLFW=no HAVE_GLUT=no prefix=/usr/local
• If no issues occur install: sudo make HAVE_X11=no HAVE_GLFW=no HAVE_GLUT=no prefix=/usr/local install
• You may need to pass in XCFLAGS during the make process if python setup.py build fails to link the binaries (this step is below).
• If you do get a linking issue, try this installation command instead: make HAVE_X11=no HAVE_GLUT=no XCFLAGS="-fPIC" prefix=/usr/local install
• Remember, you may need to use sudo for installation, as it writes the mupdf executable to /usr/local, which usually require root access to read/write from. If you don't the previous make commands may fail.
• Get the corresponding version of PyMuPDF: git clone -b <correct branch> https://github.com/rk700/PyMuPDF.git (<correct branch> should match mutool version).
• Edit the setup.py to point to the correct directories as indicated by the prefix used when making.

Here is the resp. code snippet:

...
include_dirs=['/usr/local/include/mupdf',    # we need the path of the MuPDF and zlib$
              '/usr/local/thirdparty/zlib',  # '/usr/include/mupdf',
             ],
library_dirs=['/usr/local/lib'],
libraries=['mupdf',
            #'crypto', #openssl is required by mupdf on archlinux
            #'jbig2dec', 'openjp2', 'jpeg', 'freetype',
           'mupdf-third', # the '-' is new in v1.14.0
          ], # the libraries to link with
...

(Comment unnecessary libraries out)

• Run python setup.py build

If no exception is thrown install either with python setup.py install or pip install.

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Alternative method

The following worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, after having no luck with the above.

sudo apt install python3-pip
sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip
sudo -H python3.6 -m pip install -U pymupdf