suci

Building Sūcī

Sūcī is written in Rust and uses GTK 4. Building it needs three things on any system: the Rust toolchain, GTK 4 (version 4.14 or later), and pkg-config, which tells Rust where GTK is. The first build downloads and compiles about 200 small Rust libraries and takes 3–10 minutes; later builds are quick.

Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)
macOS
Windows
After building

Linux

sudo apt install build-essential libgtk-4-dev git curl
curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh        # installs Rust; accept the defaults
source ~/.cargo/env

git clone https://github.com/wujastyk/suci.git
cd suci
cargo build --release
./target/release/suci                      # run it
packaging/build-deb.sh                     # optional: make an installable .deb

On Fedora use sudo dnf install gtk4-devel gcc; on Arch, sudo pacman -S gtk4 base-devel.

macOS

Works on macOS 12 or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Install Apple’s command-line tools (compiler, git). In Terminal:
```
xcode-select --install
```
Install Homebrew by following the one-line instructions at https://brew.sh.
Install GTK 4 and helpers:
```
brew install gtk4 adwaita-icon-theme librsvg pkgconf
```
adwaita-icon-theme supplies the toolbar icons; librsvg draws them and is also used to make the app icon.

Install Rust:

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
source ~/.cargo/env

Build and run:

git clone https://github.com/wujastyk/suci.git
cd suci
cargo build --release
./target/release/suci

Optional – make a double-clickable app:
```
packaging/macos/make-app.sh
cp -r target/macos/Suci.app /Applications/
```
The first time you open it, macOS may say the app is from an unidentified developer: right-click (or Control-click) Suci.app in Applications and choose Open, then Open again. This is needed only once.

Notes for macOS

Keyboard shortcuts use ⌘ where the Linux version uses Ctrl (⌘S save, ⌘F search, ⌘L add from DOI/ISBN, ⌘U BibTeX source …).
The app built this way uses the GTK libraries installed by Homebrew, so it runs on your Mac (or any Mac with the same Homebrew packages). Giving it to someone without Homebrew needs the libraries copied into the bundle, e.g. with dylibbundler or GTK’s gtk-mac-bundler; this is not automated yet.
If cargo build reports that gtk4 or glib-2.0 was not found, run brew link gtk4 and open a new Terminal window.

Windows

The simplest route uses MSYS2, which provides GTK, Rust and the C compiler together. Everything is done inside one MSYS2 terminal; no Windows settings need changing.

Install MSYS2 from https://www.msys2.org (accept the default folder C:\msys64).
Open “MSYS2 UCRT64” from the Start menu (the icon with a yellow-brown background; not “MSYS2 MSYS”). Bring it up to date:
```
pacman -Syu
```
If it asks you to close the window, do so, reopen MSYS2 UCRT64, and run pacman -Syu once more.

Install GTK 4, Rust and the tools:

pacman -S --needed git zip \
  mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gtk4 \
  mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-adwaita-icon-theme \
  mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-librsvg \
  mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-rust \
  mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-pkgconf \
  mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc

Build and run (still in the UCRT64 terminal):

git clone https://github.com/wujastyk/suci.git
cd suci
cargo build --release
./target/release/suci.exe

Make a folder you can use outside MSYS2 or give to others:
```
packaging/windows/bundle.sh
```
This creates target/windows/Suci/ (and a .zip of it) containing suci.exe with all the GTK files it needs. Copy the folder anywhere, for example to C:\Program Files\Suci or your Documents, and start Suci.bat (or bin\suci.exe). You can pin it to the Start menu or make a desktop shortcut to bin\suci.exe. Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unrecognised app the first time: click More info → Run anyway.

Notes for Windows

To build from an ordinary PowerShell window with Microsoft’s compiler instead, follow the “gvsbuild” instructions in the gtk-rs book.
File links written by JabRef on Windows (C:\…) are understood, as are Linux paths when a library is shared between systems, as long as the PDF folder is set in Preferences.
suci.exe --check library.bib prints an integrity report, but only when run from a terminal with a debug build (cargo build); the release build has no console window.

Status on macOS and Windows

Sūcī was developed and tested on Linux. The code is portable and the automatic GitHub builds compile and test it on macOS and Windows, but the interface has not yet been tried by a person on those systems. One thing to check there: Copy reference puts rich text (with italics) on the clipboard; if italics are lost when pasting into Mail or Word, please report it.

After building

JabRef’s PDF folder is read automatically on all three systems (from ~/.java on Linux, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.java.util.prefs.plist on macOS, and the registry on Windows). If PDFs show as “not found”, set the folder in Preferences.
Settings are stored in:
- Linux: ~/.config/suci/settings.json
- macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/suci/settings.json
- Windows: %APPDATA%\suci\settings.json
Extra citation styles (.csl files) go in a styles folder beside the settings file; Preferences → Open styles folder opens it.
Tests: cargo test --release runs the test suite on any system.

Automatic builds on GitHub

Every push to GitHub builds and tests Sūcī on Linux, macOS and Windows (.github/workflows/release.yml). Pushing a version tag, e.g.

git tag v0.3.1 && git push origin v0.3.1

publishes a GitHub Release with the Linux .deb and the Windows .zip attached. macOS users build with the steps above.

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