swftools on Ubuntu 14.04 – Trusty Tahr

SWFTools (a collection of utilities for working with Adobe Flash files, SWF files) was removed from the Ubuntu repository for some security problem with the PDF library used (I don’t remember exactly, anyway it’s not the point…).

If you need to use SWFTools, you have to build it from the sources (you need to be familiar with the terminal and some basic Linux procedures).

First, prepare the environment for source compilation:

sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall

Then, install some dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libgif-dev xpdf libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev libjpeg62 libjpeg8 libjpeg8-dev

Download the SWFTools package and uncompress it…

cd /tmp/
wget http://www.swftools.org/swftools-0.9.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf swftools-0.9.2.tar.gz 
cd swftools-0.9.2/

Now you have to add to the sources the xpdf package

cd lib/pdf
wget ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-3.04.tar.gz

Then, build the sources

cd ../..
./configure 
make

Now you have to edit this file “swfs/Makefile” to comment 2 lines (otherwise the installation script won’t work). You have to comment “rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf -o -L $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf” and “rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf -o -L $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf“, like the following:

install:
        $(mkinstalldirs) $(pkgdatadir)
        $(mkinstalldirs) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs
        $(INSTALL_DATA) ./simple_viewer.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/simple_viewer.swf
        $(INSTALL_DATA) ./keyboard_viewer.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/keyboard_viewer.swf
        $(INSTALL_DATA) ./PreLoaderTemplate.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/PreLoaderTemplate.swf
        $(INSTALL_DATA) ./tessel_loader.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/tessel_loader.swf
        $(INSTALL_DATA) ./swft_loader.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/swft_loader.swf
        #rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf -o -L $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf
        $(LN_S) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/simple_viewer.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_viewer.swf
        #rm -f $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf -o -L $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf
        $(LN_S) $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/tessel_loader.swf $(pkgdatadir)/swfs/default_loader.swf

You can install SWFTools running this last command:

sudo checkinstall

Insert the name of the package (SWFTools) when prompted by checkinstall and follow the procedure as usual.