HowTo: Compile MediaTomb with JavaScript support on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

This is a follow-up post to my original article on compiling MediaTomb with enabled JavaScript support for Ubuntu 10.04. Since Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) is now available, it was time for an update.

Since some time in Ubuntu MediaTomb is compiled without JavaScript support. JavaScript support is needed for example to handle/import playlists. This HowTo gives you a walk-through to compiling and installing MediaTomb with JScript support under Ubuntu 11.10. For this HowTo, I assume you start from a freshly installed Ubuntu.

You might ask why the version of MediaTomb provided with Ubuntu is compiled without JS support. To make long stories short: The problem is with SpiderMonkey, the Mozzila JavaScript engine. MediaTomb needs a header called jsapi.h to compile. As Ubuntu comes with packages providing these headers (libmozjs185-1.0, libmozjs185-dev) I gave it a try, but didn't manage to get is running this way.

But I managed to build MediaTomb on my Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot from source with enabled JS support. Here is a step-by-step walk-trough of what worked for me:

1. change to root or use sudo (I will assume you use sudo)
2. sudo apt-get build-dep mediatomb
3. sudo apt-get source mediatomb
4. sudo vim mediatomb-0.12.1/debian/rules
5. change --disable-libjs to --enable-libjs
6. Now you should update the changelog file in the same directory
7. get libmozjs2d and libmozjs-dev from the debian squeeze distibution: libmozjs2d_1.9.1.16-10_i386.deb and libmozjs-dev_1.9.1.16-10_i386.deb
8. If you are running 64-bit Ubuntu (amd64), you should get the corresponding amd64 libraries instead: libmozjs2d_1.9.1.16-10_amd64.deb and libmozjs-dev_1.9.1.16-10_amd64.deb
9. sudo dpkg -i libmozjs2d_1.9.1.16-10_i386
10. If you have missing dependencies:  sudo apt-get install -f
11. sudo dpkg -i libmozjs-dev_1.9.1.16-10_i386
12. If you have missing dependencies:  sudo apt-get install -f
13. Now you can cd to mediatomb-0.12.1 and try a sudo ./configure. You should see a line in the configuration summary that reads
libjs                 : yes
14. Now its time to install additional libs you might what to have for the build. Check the configuration summary. When you are done let's go!
15. If you are not already there: cd mediatomb-0.12.1
16. sudo dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc (omit the -rfakeroot if you are working as root)

That's it! If all went well you should now have three new .deb files in the directory you did the apt-get in. You can install them all in one go by dpkg -i mediatomb*.deb. Again, if you have missing dependencies:  sudo apt-get install -f