amber-vte

One VTE 0.84 build shared by the Amber Linux applications, installed to /usr/lib/amber-vte and reached only through those applications' RUNPATH. It is a runtime bundle, not a development package: applications build against the distro's libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev headers and link the bundle at run time.

Why it exists

Linux Mint 22 ships VTE 0.76. kat800's terminal needs the termprop API and the UUID functions that arrived in 0.78, and one downstream fix (patches/). The build used to live inside kat800; it is its own package so that the bindings (odin-vte) can test against the real library, and so a second application could use it without carrying a build.

Install

From the suite's apt archive:

sudo curl -fsSL -o /usr/share/keyrings/amberlinux-archive-keyring.gpg \
  https://apt.amberlinux.org/amberlinux-archive-keyring.gpg

echo 'deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/amberlinux-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.amberlinux.org amber main' \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amberlinux.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install amber-vte

Applications that need it declare Depends: amber-vte, so installing one of them installs this. It depends on amber-gtk4.

What the package contains

path	what
/usr/lib/amber-vte/libvte-2.91-gtk4.so.0	the library, stripped
/usr/share/doc/amber-vte/	copyright and changelog

No headers, no pkg-config file, no binaries. /usr/lib/amber-vte is deliberately not on the ldconfig path: only a binary whose RUNPATH names it picks the bundle up, so installing it changes nothing for any other program on the system.

Two properties the build enforces

It resolves against the distro's stock stack, and amber-gtk4, and nothing else. scripts/check-no-cascade passes only when every library the bundle needs resolves to a file some dpkg package owns.

It carries no path from the machine that built it. VTE compiles its prefix in, and strip does not touch it. The build is configured with --prefix=/usr --libdir=lib/amber-vte and staged through DESTDIR. scripts/check-no-buildpaths fails on the builder's home, the repo, or a staging directory, in the staged tree and again in the package.

Building

make deps     # build dependencies and git hooks (sudo apt)
make vte      # fetch, verify, patch and build into build/vte/stage
make ci       # the checks, lint and the .deb
make help     # every target

The tarball is checked against the sum GNOME publishes beside it. make deb writes dist/amber-vte_<version>-<revision>_amd64.deb; make deb-path prints where.

The staged headers in build/vte/stage/usr/include/vte-2.91-gtk4 are what odin-vte generates its bindings from.

Licence

LGPL-3.0-or-later, the licence of VTE. Some VTE files are GPL-3.0-or-later; see packaging/debian/copyright.