Installation

Every GitHub release carries a .deb, an AppImage, a Windows installer and a portable Windows ZIP, with a SHA256SUMS file listing their checksums. The download page links to the files of the latest release.

Check what you downloaded

Compare the file with the release’s checksum list before you run it. GitHub also attests where each file was built.

sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS-v1.5.1.txt
# gh 2.49 or newer — a distribution's may be older: cli.github.com
gh attestation verify anima-engine_1.5.1-1_amd64.deb --repo Alexandru2984/animaEngine

Linux

Debian and Ubuntu (.deb)

sudo apt install ./anima-engine_1.5.1-1_amd64.deb

To remove it again: sudo apt remove anima-engine.

AppImage (most distributions)

chmod +x animaEngine-1.5.1-x86_64.AppImage
./animaEngine-1.5.1-x86_64.AppImage

To remove it, delete the file.

Flatpak (built locally)

animaEngine is not on Flathub yet. The repository contains a Flatpak manifest: make flatpak builds a bundle (see flatpak/README.md), whose runtime comes from Flathub:

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub \
    https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user build/eu.animaengine.Anima.flatpak
flatpak run eu.animaengine.Anima

Arch Linux

A PKGBUILD lives in the repository under packaging/aur/; the AUR package has not been published yet.

Windows (experimental)

From 1.5, each release also carries a Windows installer and a portable ZIP, both for x86_64.

• The installer needs no administrator rights, installs for you alone and is removed from Settings → Apps.
• The ZIP runs from any folder.

Neither is signed yet, so SmartScreen asks before running them: choose More info → Run anyway once you have checked the download. Windows support is new and has so far been tested under Wine only, not on a real Windows machine — reports are very welcome.

macOS

macOS is not supported.

From source

You need Rust 1.88 or newer, from rustup — a distribution’s own rustc is often older (Ubuntu 24.04’s is 1.75).

The binary links two system libraries, xkbcommon and ALSA (for script sounds), and the C++ runtime of its H.264 decoder. Vulkan, OpenGL, X11 and Wayland are opened at run time, so their headers are not needed. pkg-config finds the two libraries; it is not part of build-essential.

# Ubuntu, Debian
sudo apt install -y build-essential pkg-config libxkbcommon-dev libasound2-dev
# Fedora
sudo dnf install -y gcc gcc-c++ pkgconf-pkg-config libxkbcommon-devel alsa-lib-devel
# Arch
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel libxkbcommon alsa-lib

# Build and run
cargo build --release
./target/release/anima_engine

To install it as anima-engine, with its menu entry and icons (drawn by rsvg-convert, from librsvg):

make icons && sudo make install      # under /usr/local
make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local     # or for you alone
sudo make uninstall                  # and back out

--no-default-features builds without video (the OpenH264 decoder) and without sound (ALSA); --features video or --features audio puts one back.