Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.4-419

Chapter 9. General Libraries

libportal-0.9.1

Introduction to libportal

The libportal package provides a library that contains GIO-style async APIs for most Flatpak portals.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

Additional Downloads

libportal Dependencies

Required

GLib-2.86.1 (with GObject Introspection)

Recommended

GTK-3.24.51 and GTK-4.20.2

Recommended (Runtime)

To make this package really useful, install xdg-desktop-portal-1.20.3, xdg-desktop-portal-gtk-1.15.3, xdg-desktop-portal-gnome-48.0 (if running a GNOME desktop environment), and xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt-1.2.0 (if running a LXQt desktop environment). They are not needed if only using this package to satisfy a build dependency.

Optional

Gi-DocGen-2025.5 (for documentation), dbusmock-0.37.1 and pytest-8.4.2 (for testing), Qt-6.10.0, and Vala-0.56.18

Installation of libportal

[Warning]

Warning

If a previous version of libportal is installed, move the headers out of the way so that later packages do not encounter conflicts (as the root user): 

if [ -e /usr/include/libportal ]; then
    rm -rf /usr/include/libportal.old &&
    mv -vf /usr/include/libportal{,.old}
fi

First, apply a patch to fix building against Qt 6.9 and later: 

patch -Np1 -i ../libportal-0.9.1-qt6.9_fixes-1.patch

Install libportal by running the following commands: 

mkdir build &&
cd    build &&

meson setup --prefix=/usr       \
            --buildtype=release \
            -D vapi=false       \
            -D docs=false       \
            .. &&
ninja

If you have Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed and wish to build the API documentation for this package, issue: 

sed -i "/output/s/-1/-0.9.1/" ../doc/meson.build &&
meson configure -D docs=true                     &&
ninja

To test the results, issue: ninja test. Note that additional dbus-daemon processes may need to be killed after the tests are run.

Now, as the root user: 

ninja install

Command Explanations

--buildtype=release: Specify a buildtype suitable for stable releases of the package, as the default may produce unoptimized binaries.

-D vapi=false: This parameter disables using Vala-0.56.18. Remove this parameter if you have it installed.

-D docs=false: Allow building this package without Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed. If you have Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed and you wish to rebuild and install the API documentation, a meson configure command will reset this option.

Contents

Installed Programs: None
Installed Libraries: libportal.so, libportal-gtk3.so, libportal-gtk4.so, and libportal-qt6.so
Installed Directories: /usr/include/libportal and /usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libportal

Short Descriptions

libportal.so

provides GIO-style async APIs for most Flatpak portals

libportal-gtk3.so

provides GTK+-3 specific functions for interacting with Flatpak portals

libportal-gtk4.so

provides GTK-4 specific functions for interacting with Flatpak portals

libportal-qt6.so

provides Qt6-specific functions for interacting with Flatpak portals