zimwriterfs is a console tool to create ZIM
files from a locally-stored directory containing "self-sufficient"
HTML content (with pictures, javascript and stylesheets). The result
will contain all the files of the local directory compressed and
merged in the ZIM file. Nothing more, nothing less. The generated file
can be opened with a ZIM reader; Kiwix is one
example, but there are others.
zimwriterfs works - for now - only on POSIX-compatible systems, you
simply need to compile it and run it. The software does not need a lot
of resources, but if you create a pretty big ZIM files, then it could
take a while to complete.
This document assumes you have a little knowledge about software
compilation. If you experience difficulties with the dependencies or
with the zimwriterfs compilation itself, we recommend to have a look
to kiwix-build.
Although zimwriterfs can be compiled/cross-compiled on/for many
systems, the following documentation explains how to do it on POSIX
ones. It is primarily though for GNU/Linux systems and has been tested
on recent releases of Ubuntu and Fedora.
zimwriterfs relies on many third parts software libraries. They are
prerequisites to the Zimwriterfs compilation. Following libraries
need to be available:
- ZIM (package
libzim-devon Debian/Ubuntu) - Magic (package
libmagic-devon Debian/Ubuntu) - Z (package
zlib1g-devon Debian/Ubuntu) - Gumbo (package
libgumbo-devon Debian/Ubuntu) - ICU (package
libicu-devon Debian/Ubuntu)
These dependencies may or may not be packaged by your operating system. They may also be packaged but only in an older version. The compilation script will tell you if one of them is missing or too old. In the worse case, you will have to download and compile a more recent version by hand.
If you want to install these dependencies locally, then ensure that
meson (through pkg-config) will properly find them.
zimwriterfs builds using Meson version
0.39 or higher. Meson relies itself on Ninja, Pkg-config and few other
compilation tools.
Install first the few common compilation tools:
- Meson
- Ninja
- Pkg-config
These tools should be packaged if you use a cutting edge operating system. If not, have a look to the Troubleshooting section.
Once all dependencies are installed, you can compile zimwriterfs with:
meson . build
ninja -C buildBy default, it will compile dynamic linked libraries. All binary files
will be created in the "build" directory created automatically by
Meson. If you want statically linked libraries, you can add
-Dstatic-linkage=true option to the Meson command.
Depending of you system, ninja may be called ninja-build.
If you want to install zimwriterfs and the headers you just have
compiled on your system, here we go:
ninja -C build installYou might need to run the command as root (or using 'sudo'), depending where you want to install the libraries. After the installation succeeded, you may need to run ldconfig (as root).
If you want to uninstall zimwriterfs:
ninja -C build uninstallLike for the installation, you might need to run the command as root (or using 'sudo').
Statically pre-compiled binaries are provided here https://download.openzim.org/release/zimwriterfs/.
A Docker image with zimwriterfs can be built from the docker
directory. The project maintains an official image available at
https://hub.docker.com/r/openzim/mwoffliner.
If you need to install Meson "manually":
virtualenv -p python3 ./ # Create virtualenv
source bin/activate # Activate the virtualenv
pip3 install meson # Install Meson
hash -r # Refresh bash pathsIf you need to install Ninja "manually":
git clone git://github.com/ninja-build/ninja.git
cd ninja
git checkout release
./configure.py --bootstrap
mkdir ../bin
cp ninja ../bin
cd ..If the compilation still fails, you might need to get a more recent version of a dependency than the one packaged by your Linux distribution. Try then with a source tarball distributed by the problematic upstream project or even directly from the source code repository.