Manual Setup for Linux and macOS

A manual setup will allow you to edit the code while running the extension.

How to Install Ink/Stitch Manually

The required python version for working with Ink/Stitch is >=3.11.0. We recommend using pyenv to manage your Python virtual environmentm but any other virtual environment manager should work (ex. conda, uv etc..)

1. Clone the extension source

git clone https://github.com/inkstitch/inkstitch

2. Python Dependencies

A few more Python modules are needed. In some cases this extension uses features that aren’t available in the versions of the modules pre-packaged in distributions, so we recommend installing them directly with pip.

python -m pip install -r inkstitch/requirements.txt

3. Prepare INX files

Now we need to create the files for the Inkscape menu:

cd inkstitch
make manual

When you later add or change a template file for Ink/Stitch extensions, simply run:

make inx

cd ~/.config/inkscape/extensions
ln -s /path/to/inkstitch

5. Configure Inkscape Python Environment

By default, Inkscape will use your system’s python interpreter. On modern linux distributions, the PEP668 standard prevents you from installing python packages directly into the system python interpreter. To work around this limitation, we need to tell Inkscape to use the python interpreter we installed in step 2:

  • Open the file preferences.xml.
    The location can be found under Edit > Preferences > System > User preferences
  • Close Inkscape before editing the file.
    Otherwise it will be overwritten when Inkscape closes.

  • Search for the term <group id="extensions" /> and update to the correct Python interpreter.

    Example: Use <group id="extensions" python-interpreter="/usr/local/bin/python3" /> where /usr/local/bin/python3 is the value returned by which python3.

For more information see Inkscape documentation.

6. Run Inkscape.

Changes to the Python code take effect the next time the extension is run. Changes to the extension description files (*.inx) take effect the next time Inkscape is restarted.