Dependencies
August 8, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
Most of these dependencies should be installed automatically when you install official packages.
Unless otherwise stated, the dependencies are all optional.
The tools required for building all of these projects are not listed here.
Typically, you will need: gcc or clang, gnu-make, libiconv, gettext, cmake, autoconf, automake, pkg-config or pkgconf, bison, flex, intltool, etc
For building xpra itself and some of the python modules, you will also need Cython
Core Dependencies
Those are required by almost every component.
| Project | Source Download Link | Purpose | Client or Server | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| glib | https://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/glib/ | low-level library | both | Required |
| gtk | http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/ | UI Toolkit | both | Required (*) |
| PyGObject | https://pypi.org/project/PyGObject/#files | Bindings for GObject based libraries such as GTK and GStreamer | both | Required (*) |
(*) needed for running any kind of server, or GUI clients.
It is not required for running text-only clients like xpra top or xpra info.
And some of their transitive dependencies:
| Project | Source Download Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| gobject-introspection | https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gobject-introspection/-/releases | Provides bindings for Gtk, GLib, etc |
| librsvg | https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/librsvg/-/releases | svg parsing |
| freetype | https://freetype.org/download.html | font parsing |
| harfbuzzz | https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/releases | text shaping engine |
| icu | https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases | unicode library |
| pixman | https://www.cairographics.org/releases/ | pixel manipulation |
| fribidi | https://github.com/fribidi/fribidi/releases | unicode bidirectional library |
| pango | https://download.gnome.org/sources/pango/ | text layout and rendering |
| gdk-pixbuf | https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdk-pixbuf/-/releases | image library |
| libepoxy | https://github.com/anholt/libepoxy/releases | OpenGL function pointer management |
| graphene | https://github.com/ebassi/graphene/releases | types for graphic libraries |
| libtiff | https://download.osgeo.org/libtiff/ | Tag Image File Format |
| zlib | https://www.zlib.net/ | Compression Library |
Some of the transitive dependencies are listed separately below as they are direct dependencies of xpra itself.
ie: lz4, libpng, etc..
Network Layer
See Network
Authentication
| Project | Source Download Link | Purpose | Client or Server | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| python-gssapi | https://pypi.org/project/gssapi/ | GSSAPI | server | #1691 |
| python-kerberos | https://pypi.org/project/kerberos/ | Kerberos | server | #1691 |
| python-ldap | https://pypi.org/project/python-ldap/ | LDAP | server | #1691 |
| python-ldap3 | https://pypi.org/project/ldap3/ | LDAP v3 | server | #1691 |
| pyu2f | https://pypi.org/project/pyu2f/ | U2F | server | #1789 |
| python-scramp | https://pypi.org/project/scramp/ | SCRAM | client + server | optional SCRAM authentication |
Python modules
Encodings
| Project | Source Download Link | Purpose | Client or Server |
|---|---|---|---|
| x264 | ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/x264/snapshots/ | h264 encoding | server |
| openh264 | https://github.com/cisco/openh264/releases | h264 encoding and decoding | both |
| vpx | http://downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webm/index.html | vp8 and vp9 codecs | both |
| webp | http://downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webp/index.html | webp codec | both |
| libpng | ftp://ftp.simplesystems.org/pub/libpng/png/src/libpng16/ | png encoding | both |
| libjpeg-turbo | https://sourceforge.net/projects/libjpeg-turbo/files/ | jpeg encoding | both |
| python-pillow | https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow | png,jpeg,webp encoding and decoding, format conversion - Required | both |
| libavif | https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/libavif/releases | avif encoding and decoding | both |
| libyuv | https://chromium.googlesource.com/libyuv/libyuv/ | Colourspace Conversion | both |
| pycuda | https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pycuda | NVENC | server |
| cuda | https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit | NVENC | server |
| pyNVML | https://pypi.python.org/pypi/nvidia-ml-py/ | NVENC | server |
Audio
See audio forwarding
| Project | Source Download Link | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| gstreamer | http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/ | audio framework |
| Ogg | http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/ | ogg container format |
| opus | http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/opus/ | opus codec |
| Flac | http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/flac/ | flac codec |
| Vorbis | http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/ | vorbis codec |
| wavpack | http://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html | wavpack codec |
| faac | https://github.com/knik0/faac/releases | aac encoder |
| faad | https://github.com/knik0/faad2/releases | aac decoder |
| lame | http://sourceforge.net/projects/lame/files/lame/ | MP3 encoder |
| TwoLame | http://sourceforge.net/projects/twolame/files/twolame/ | MP3 encoder |
MacOS Dependency Graphs
These graphs were generated using jhbuild dot on MacOS.
The MacOS builds include very low level build dependencies.
Codecs
Python3 Modules
GTK3
Tools
MacOS Packaging Tools
MS Windows Dependency Graph
This graph was generated from the SBOM
for a "Light" build of xpra for MS Windows using:
sbom2dot --input ./Xpra-Light-x86_64_6.4-r39169.json --output xpra.dot
dot -Gsize=40,50\! -Gdpi=144 -Tpng -o win32-deps.png xpra.dot
