How To Install Rofi 1.5 on Ubuntu 16.04

I have tried to install rofi on 16.04 but ran into issues with this package libxkbcommon

As stated here on the package's github the version of rofi that is availible on apt-get is very old. I want to try to install the latest (1.5) version but every time I follow the instructions on building it on my own I run an issue where my libxkbcommon package isn't updated enough. It calls for v0.7 but I only have 0.5.

I have not found a way to upgarde libxkbcommon to 0.7 so I may install Rofi. Is there an easier way to do this, or am I missing something?

2 Answers

I successfully installed rofi v.1.5.1 on Ubuntu 16.04 by adding this ppa maintained by Jason Pleau.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jasonpleau/rofi
sudo apt update

And then install rofi or upgrade your system if rofi is already installed.

sudo apt install rofi

As stated in the linked readme for that package on github,

This will cause issues with newer scripts (i.e. with clerk) and misses important updates and bug-fixes. Newer versions of Rofi however requires versions of xcb-util-xrm and libxkbcommon that are not available in the 16.04 repositories. These need to be manually installed before rofi can be installed either via source code or Zesty version from the ubuntu's launchpad page for rofi.

It's not particularly recommended that you install those alternative dependencies from their repo (as it could potentially lead to breakage) but if you want the new version of Rofi you can add their repo and install the versioned dependencies from there.