scrot (SCReenshOT)

scrot - command line screen capture utility

What is scrot?

scrot is a simple command line screen capture utility, it uses imlib2 to grab and save images.

scrot has many useful features:

Support for multiple image formats: JPG, PNG, GIF, and others.
The screenshot's quality is configurable.
It is possible to capture a specific window or a rectangular area on the screen.

Because scrot is a command line utility, it can easily be scripted and put to novel uses. For instance, scrot can be used to monitor an X server in absence.

scrot is free software under the MIT-advertising license.

Help this project

scrot needs your help. If you are a programmer and want to help a nice project, this is your opportunity.

The original scrot went unmaintained; the source of the last version, 0.8, was imported from Debian. After, patches from Debian and elsewhere were applied to create the 0.9 release. The details of our releases are registered in the ChangeLog file. Now, scrot is maintained by volunteers under Resurrecting Open Source Projects.

If you are interested in helping scrot, read the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

Building

This section describes the steps to build and install scrot.

Dependencies

scrot requires a few projects and libraries:

autoconf (build time only)
autoconf-archive (build time only)
pkg-config (build time only)
imlib2
libbsd (if ./configure --enable-libbsd-feature-test returns true)
X (e.g. X.Org)
libXcomposite (can be found in X.Org)
libXext (can be found in X.Org)
libXfixes (can be found in X.Org)
libXinerama (can be found in X.Org)

Generic installation instruction

In short, if you are building from an GIT checkout of scrot (but not if you are building from a downloaded tarball) then you will first need to run:

$ ./autogen.sh

TIP: if the source code does not have a configure file, you will need to run the ./autogen.sh command.

Now, proceed as shown below for a tarball. (If you are using the tarball but have applied additional patches then you may also need to run ./autogen.sh.)

To build scrot from a downloaded tarball just type:

$ ./configure
$ make

And as root:

# make install

$ sudo make install

Cleaning up the build is also simple:

$ make clean

To vanish the source code, removing all pre-built files, including configure, run:

$ make distclean

You can return to a pristine source tree before running ./configure:

$ ./autogen.sh clean

Debian users can install scrot from their package manager:

# apt install scrot

$ sudo apt install scrot

Author

scrot was originally developed by Tom Gilbert.

Currently, source code is maintained by volunteers. Newer versions are available at https://github.com/resurrecting-open-source-projects/scrot

brunurb / scrot