Installing Copasi on Manjaro Linux: Problem and Solution

[Melanie Stefan]

Hi all,

tl;dr: I tried installing Copasi on Manjaro Linux, it didn't work at first, but then it did, so I am sharing what I did for anyone else who may find themselves in the same situation.

Full story:

- I am running Manjaro Linux 21.3.6, downloaded the installer for Copasi 4.36 (Build 260) for 64-bit Linux. The installation ran without any obvious problems.

- BUT navigating to the relevant directory and typing

./CopasiUI

gives the following error message:

This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "xcb"
in "<path_to_copasi_dir>/share/copasi/lib/plugins"
Available platform plugins are: xcb.
Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

- (Narrator: Reinstalling the application did not fix this problem).

- But after a bit of searching around I found (here: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/undefined-symbol-ft-done-mm-var/36461) that this may work:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libfreetype.so ./CopasiUI


- And this did work! You can make this part of an alias in your .bashrc or .zshrc or wherever you do this kind of stuff.
   
alias CopasiUI='LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libfreetype.so <path_to_CopasiUI>'


(I don't understand this well enough to explain. It has to do with telling the system where it should look for libraries first (?), but honestly I don't know. I just spent the day googling and trying random things like a monkey with a keyboard. And am hoping this post will save someone else some time.)

Best wishes,
Melanie

[Frank Bergmann]

Thank you Melanie for letting us know. We'll be sure to test it on manjaro next time. Maybe bundling freetype from the build system will already solve the problem. 

best

Frank

[Hoops, Stefan (sh9cq)]

Hello Melanie,

We are already bundling libfreetype with COPASI. Can you see what
happens if you remove:

<path_to_copasi_dir>/share/copasi/lib/libfreetype.so.6

Thanks,
Stefan

--
Stefan Hoops, Ph.D.
Research Associate Professor
Biocomplexity Institute & Initiative
University of Virginia
995 Research Park Boulevard
Charlottesville, VA 22911

Phone: +1 540 570 1301
Email: sho...@virginia.edu

[Melanie Stefan]

Hi Stefan and Frank,

I can confirm that this works: I can start CopasiUI after removing that
file.

Many thanks for your help!

Melanie