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Building Polaris on openSUSE Tumbleweed

Polaris has no prebuilt openSUSE package yet, but it builds cleanly from source on openSUSE Tumbleweed (x86_64). This guide covers the dependencies, the build, and a few openSUSE-specific gotchas. A CI workflow that builds an installable RPM in an opensuse/tumbleweed container lives at .github/workflows/opensuse-build.yml.

Tested on Tumbleweed with an AMD GPU (VAAPI encode). NVIDIA hosts should add the CUDA toolkit and build with -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_CUDA=ON.

1. Install build dependencies

Section titled “1. Install build dependencies”
Terminal window
sudo zypper install \
  gcc-c++ make cmake ninja git python3 which wget \
  nodejs24 npm24 go \
  libboost_headers-devel libboost_filesystem-devel libboost_log-devel \
  libboost_locale-devel libboost_program_options-devel libboost_thread-devel \
  libcap-devel libcurl-devel libdrm-devel libevdev-devel libgudev-1_0-devel \
  libnotify-devel libva-devel libopenssl-devel systemd-devel \
  libX11-devel libxcb-devel libXcursor-devel libXfixes-devel libXi-devel \
  libXinerama-devel libXrandr-devel libXtst-devel \
  Mesa-libGL-devel libgbm-devel \
  libminiupnpc-devel nlohmann_json-devel libnuma-devel libpulse-devel \
  libopus-devel libopusenc-devel \
  wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel pipewire-devel \
  libayatana-appindicator3-devel desktop-file-utils appstream-glib \
  labwc grim wlr-randr xdpyinfo xwayland

(The last line — labwc grim wlr-randr xdpyinfo xwayland — are runtime helpers for the isolated compositor / headless capture path.)

2. Build

Section titled “2. Build”
Terminal window
git clone --recursive https://github.com/papi-ux/polaris.git
cd polaris
cmake -B build -G Ninja \
  -DBUILD_DOCS=OFF \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
  -DPOLARIS_ASSETS_DIR=/usr/share/polaris \
  -DPOLARIS_EXECUTABLE_PATH=/usr/bin/polaris \
  -DBOOST_USE_STATIC=OFF \
  -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_WAYLAND=ON \
  -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_X11=ON \
  -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_DRM=ON \
  -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_BROWSER_STREAM=ON \
  -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_CUDA=OFF -DCUDA_FAIL_ON_MISSING=OFF
cmake --build build --parallel "$(nproc)"
sudo cmake --install build
sudo -H polaris --setup-host

openSUSE-specific notes

Section titled “openSUSE-specific notes”
  • -DBOOST_USE_STATIC=OFF is required. openSUSE ships only shared Boost. With the default static lookup, find_package(Boost ...) reports missing component targets and the FetchContent fallback collides with the partially-detected system targets (add_library cannot create ALIAS target "Boost::headers" ... already exists). Turning static off makes it use the shared system Boost directly.
  • AMD / VAAPI is the default-friendly path (-DPOLARIS_ENABLE_CUDA=OFF); choose the VAAPI encoder in the web UI. NVIDIA hosts: install the CUDA toolkit and use -DPOLARIS_ENABLE_CUDA=ON.

3. Optional: build an installable RPM

Section titled “3. Optional: build an installable RPM”

cpack -G RPM works, but the project’s explicit CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_REQUIRES uses Fedora package names (boost-filesystem, libcurl, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, …) that don’t exist on openSUSE. Override them with openSUSE names — the shared-library dependencies are still auto-detected:

Terminal window
( cd build && cpack -G RPM \
    -D CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_REQUIRES="grim, labwc, wlr-randr, xdpyinfo, xwayland, which" )
sudo zypper install --allow-unsigned-rpm ./build/cpack_artifacts/*.rpm

4. Container/CI note

Section titled “4. Container/CI note”

When building inside a minimal opensuse/tumbleweed container, the base image ships busybox-gawk, which blocks the real gawk that desktop-file-utils/rpm-build require. Install gawk first to swap it in:

Terminal window
zypper --non-interactive install --force-resolution gawk

This is unnecessary on a normal Tumbleweed desktop (gawk is already present).