The default installation of Inkscape will always be a few revisions behind the bleeding edge. If you want those newer features, this is a brief guide as to how to compile it locally. Thanks to j michaelson for this guide.

Building Inkscape for the First Time

Install Required Dependencies

You will require the following packages, as given by the installation line following:

sudo apt-get install automake build-essential subversion intltool liblcms1-dev libtool libgtkmm-2.4-dev libglib2.0-dev libpng12-dev libxslt1-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libpopt-dev libgc-dev libgsl0-dev libboost-dev

Obtain Recent Sources

We will use subversion to get the source files.

svn checkout https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/inkscape/inkscape/trunk inkscape

Build the Binary Executable Image

Now we must cd into the directory it just created, and build the package with the following lines:

./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

This should now provide you with a bleeding edge version of Inkscape.

Subsequent Builds of Inkscape

Update the Source Tree

First we need to cd into the Inkscape source directory that we created above. Once there we simply perform the following command to update the file structure:

svn update

Build the Newer Binary Executable Image

This is identical to the above step:

./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Optional Inkscape Compile Settings

Inkscape offers a few features not enabled by default when you issue the  ./configure  command alone. Two of the more interesting ones are "Inkboard" and the "Little Color Management System".

Inkboard

Inkscape has a built in collaborative feature titled "Inkboard" that allows you to share your ideas across a network connection with someone else utilizing Inkscape. If you would like to enable SSL support for inkboard you will require the "libssl-dev" library. To install the development library for SSL support, issue  sudo apt-get install libssl-dev . To enable inkboard prior to the compile, add "--enable-inkboard" to the above  ./configure  commands ie.  ./configure --enable-inkboard <other options> 

Little Color Management System

If you are interested in having color management integrated into Inkscape you will need to enable this option. In addition to this, you will require the "liblcms1-dev" library. To install the development library, issue  sudo apt-get install liblcms1-dev . To enable lcms prior to the compile, add "--enable-lcms" to the above  ./configure  commands ie.  ./configure --enable-lcms <other options> 

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