How to compile DigiKam 3.2 on Ubuntu

How to compile DigiKam 3.1 on Ubuntu 12.04 was this blog's most visited post by far, with the sad Tribute to Nord about our Labrador dog, who is not with us anymore, coming second by a close margin in front of digiKam installation and configuration - Part 1. All in all it looks like there is quite some interest about digiKam on Ubuntu or maybe other instructions available online are a bit outdated. Anyway, since 13-May-2013 digikam 3.2 is available and although you can guess how to compile it from comments to this post, it deserves step by step instructions.

update: I successfully tested steps below on Ubuntu versions 12.04,  12.10 and 13.04

I suppose you already know how to open Terminal window in Ubuntu, if you don't you can look here.

First of all, if you have any older version of digikam installed, remove it. To check what you have and to remove it use commands:

dpkg -l *digikam*
sudo apt-get remove digikam

Replace digikam in second command with the name displayed by first one. It is also a good idea to first update your Ubuntu installation with the latest patches by:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

As already pointed out by anonymous comment (please tell us your name, so I can give you deserved credit) digikam 3.2 requires new libs which are only available in kubuntu backports, so we must add the required repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get update

Then install all required tools and libs:

sudo apt-get install gcc cpp make cmake checkinstall
sudo apt-get install kdelibs5

Next download and extract digikam source and prepare working folder:

cd Downloads
wget http://download.kde.org/stable/digikam/digikam-3.2.0.tar.bz2
tar jxvf digikam-3.2.0.tar.bz2
cd digikam-3.2.0/
mkdir build
cd build

Install digikam's dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libgpod4-nogtk
sudo apt-get build-dep digikam kipi-plugins

Check if all requirements for compile are available:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix` ..

Compile it:

sudo checkinstall  --pkgname=digiKam3.2 --install=no  make install

And install it (use the resulting .deb name from above command):

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite digikam3.2_yyyymmdd-1_i386.deb

That is all, it should work. At least it did in my test environment. Write a comment if it worked for you.