How to install Poppler on Windows?

Question

The most recent version of ScraperWiki depends on Poppler (or so the GitHub says). Unfortunately, it only specifies how to get it on macOS and Linux, not Windows.

A

Answer 1

You should consider using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

1. Enable WSL on Windows 10 (it will not work on S edition)
2. Install Ubuntu (latest version) on WSL from the Windows Store
3. Open Ubuntu command-line

In the Ubuntu Command-line, run the following commands:

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade
• sudo apt install poppler-utils
• pdftocairo -v - to check the installed version

You can then run pdftocairo (for example) in two ways:

1. Within the Ubuntu command-line: pdftocairo ...
2. Directly from Windows command-line: wsl pdftocairo...

NOTE: There is a default version of poppler for each release of Ubuntu. You will need to look up the instructions (there should be plenty on the internet), for how to install the latest version of poppler-utils on Ubuntu. This might involve quite a few steps, which will compile from the source code. For example, something like this https://askubuntu.com/a/722955. And then you might get a lot of problems.

The latest version of Ubuntu 19.04, can install Poppler 74. But Ubuntu 18.04 seems to be the latest version you can install for WSL for now, and that installs Poppler 62.