Stuck in building calibre (aarch64, qemu)

[beedaddy]

I know that calibre is a complex piece of software. Nevertheless, I tried to compile it in a aarch64 qemu with debian bullseye. I tried to follow this guide. Running "./setup.py bootstrap" ends up with the following error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/./setup.py", line 119, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/./setup.py", line 104, in main
    command.run_all(opts)
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/__init__.py", line 233, in run_all
    self.run_cmd(self, opts)
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/__init__.py", line 223, in run_cmd
    self.run_cmd(scmd, opts)
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/__init__.py", line 227, in run_cmd
    cmd.run(opts)
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/translations.py", line 319, in run
    self.compile_website_translations()
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/translations.py", line 615, in compile_website_translations
    done = self._compile_website_translations()
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/translations.py", line 608, in _compile_website_translations
    lang_names[l] = {x: t(x) for x in dl}
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/setup/translations.py", line 608, in <dictcomp>
    lang_names[l] = {x: t(x) for x in dl}
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/src/calibre/utils/localization.py", line 417, in get_language
    return get_iso_language(gettext_func, lang)
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/src/calibre/utils/localization.py", line 397, in get_iso_language
    iso639 = _load_iso639()
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/src/calibre/utils/localization.py", line 390, in _load_iso639
    _iso639 = msgpack_loads(ip)
  File "/home/martin/src/calibre/src/calibre/utils/serialize.py", line 110, in msgpack_loads
    return msgpack.unpackb(dump, ext_hook=msgpack_decoder, raw=False, use_list=use_list, strict_map_key=False)
  File "msgpack/_unpacker.pyx", line 206, in msgpack._cmsgpack.unpackb
ValueError: Unpack failed: incomplete input

Now I'm not sure what the problem could be. I can't see whether there's a package missing. Perhaps someone has an idea…?

[kovidgoyal]

Those apply only building x86/x64 binaries. Support for arm is not present.

[beedaddy]

Oh, what a pity. So there's no easy way to build an installer for ARM-based systems then, is there?

At least, the bootstrap process went through (after a --clean-all).

The only remaining problem during bootstrap is:

Failed to initialize plugin: SmartDevice App Interface (0, 0, 1)
Failed to initialize plugin: <class 'calibre.devices.smart_device_app.driver.SMART_DEV ICE_APP'>

"./setup.py install --prefix=/opt/calibre" also looks good except for

xdg-desktop-menu: No writable system menu directory found.

Which may be due to my setup.
(EDIT: Creating /usr/share/desktop-directories by hand fixed this problem.)

But, not being able to make an installer lets me stop here.

[kovidgoyal]

Yes, there are no arm binaries for calibre. If I get around to adding ARM support to bypy I will just release an ARM linux calibre build myself. But its more likely that ARM support will be added to macOS first (its already partially there and used to build kitty for M1 macs)