Document build requirements

[meedstrom]

The tool build_linux.sh is really Arch-specific since it requires these packages (notably, gendesk seems unique to Arch). Maybe put that in the README somewhere?

python python-pip cairo desktop-file-utils gendesk

---

A separate issue from the above: the provided run-from-source steps (with python -m venv venv) will not work on Debian. Debian users need to install these packages first:

python3 python-is-python3 python3-pip libcairo-dev build-essential

---

Bonus: I started writing a tentative Dockerfile to try to run build_linux.sh on my Debian system (in an Arch container), but it runs into an error at the python -m venv venv step:

FROM archlinux:base
WORKDIR /usr/local/app  
COPY . .
RUN pacman -Sy
RUN pacman -S --noconfirm python python-pip cairo desktop-file-utils gendesk
RUN python -m venv venv

Alas, the error was not so informative:

=> ERROR [6/8] RUN python -m venv venv                                    4.9s 
------                                                                          
> [6/8] RUN python -m venv venv:                                               
4.894 Error: Command '['/usr/local/app/venv/bin/python', '-m', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade',
'--default-pip']' returned non-zero exit status 1.                     
------                                                       

[meedstrom]

I see gendesk exists in the makedeb package repo so we could possibly just submit a PKGBUILD for blog2epub to that repo.

[bohdanbobrowski]

Thanks for pointing this out. The problem is, that I've never delivered and fully tested building linux package. Linux screenshots are made by running app from sources.

I will keep this thread/issue to not forget about it. And will try to make some updates in following days - I was working on some changes in UI, and perhaps I will add also some linux package (I like more arch package system, but debian ofc are more popular) or packages.

I will ping you here if I will push any changes regarding this topic.