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 supported by Imlib2.
• 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-feh 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.

Installing

scrot is available in the official repository of many linux/BSD distributions. It is recommended to use the system package manager for installing scrot. For example, Debian users can run the following command to install scrot:

$ sudo apt install scrot

A list of repositories that package scrot is available here. If your distribution does not package scrot, you may also build scrot from source by following the build instructions below.

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)
• A pkg-config implementation (e.g. pkgconf) (build time only)
• imlib2 (must be built with X support)
• libbsd (only needed if <err.h> is missing)
• An X11 implementation (e.g. X.Org)
• libXcomposite (can be found in X.Org)
• libXfixes (can be found in X.Org)
• libXrandr (can be found in X.Org)

The deps.pc file documents minimum version requirement for some of the libraries.

Generic installation instructions

If you are building from a git checkout, or if you have applied additional patches to a tarball release, run:

$ ./autogen.sh

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

If you have a tarball release, or after running the command above on a git checkout or a patched tarball, run:

$ ./configure && make

To install the compiled result, run as root:

# make install

Or, as a regular user:

$ 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

Bash and Zsh completion scripts are available in etc/.

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