Install Cairo Graphics and PyCairo on Ubuntu 14.04 / Linux Mint 17

Cairo is a 2D graphics library implemented as a library written in the C programming language but if you’d like to use Python programming language, you should also install Python bindings for Cairo.

This guide will go through installation of Cairo Graphics library version 1.14.2 (most recent) and py2cairo Python bindings version 1.10.1 (also most recent).

Install Cairo

It’s very easy with the following repository. Just add it, update your packages and install.

1sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing
2sudo apt-get update
3sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev

Install py2cairo

1cd ~
2git clone git://git.cairographics.org/git/py2cairo

See what’s your prefix

1python -c "import sys; print sys.prefix"
2/usr

Install dependencies

1sudo apt-get install automake pkg-config libtool

Build

1cd ~/py2cairo
2./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
3./configure
4sudo make
5sudo make install

Verify

1python
2>>> import cairo
3>>> cairo.cairo_version_string()
4'1.14.2'
5>>> cairo.version
6'1.10.1'

Now, you can use up-to-date versions of these softwares in your computer.

• py2cairo
• cairo 1.14.2
• python
• cairo
• cairo graphics
• py2cairo 1.10.1