News

27-05-2006 – Added CONFIGURE_OPTIONS setting. Now, you can run ./autogen.sh script with custom options e.g. –prefix=/usr, just add them to the CONFIGURE_OPTIONS variable inside the script. Thanks to Shayne O’Connor for suggesting this feature!

Introduction

I’m a big fun of GNOME desktop environment and GTK+ based UI but recently I decided to look for something lighter and faster. After a few minutes of googling I found Xfce – small and robust desktop environment based on GTK+. I call it a Tiny GNOME.

I use Ubuntu Linux on my laptop. First, I installed Xfce from Ubuntu packages but shortly then I found new interesting features in latest SVN version, so I compiled and installed Xfce development version myself.
Next step was to write a small utility that would help me to do update/checkout Xfce sandbox, build and install automatically. So, here it is this script that makes it possible to do all those steps with single command executed from shell.

Installation

1. Create main directory for Xfce sources:

   mkdir ~/dev/xfce

   Every SVN module will be checkouted to separate directory inside this main folder.

2. Unpack xfce-svn-builder script and copy to the ~/dev/xfce directory created in the first step:

   tar -jxf xfce-svn-builder-1.0.tar.gz
   cp xfce-svn-builder-1.0/* ~/dev/xfce
   

3. Check, if you have following files in the ~/dev/xfce directory:
   • xfce-svn-builder.sh – Xfce builder script
   • xfce-svn-modules.lst – file with list of Xfce modules you want to update/build/install
4. Now, you’re ready to use xfce-svn-builder script to checkout/update/build/install development version of Xfce from SVN repository.

NOTE: You are free to customize paths used in steps above accordint to youre preferences. Script does not depend on any fixed paths.

How to use xfce-svn-builder

1. Go to the Xfce sandbox directory created during installation steps:

   cd ~/dev/xfce

2. Open modules database file with your favourite editor (e.g. vim):

   vim xfce-svn-modules.lst

   Now, add and remove modules according to your preferences. Here is small example of modules database file:

   ### MANDATORY MODULES
   # *** WARNING! DON'T CHANGE ORDER OF MANDATORY MODULES ***
   xfce4-dev-tools
   libxfce4util
   libxfcegui4
   libxfce4mcs
   xfce-mcs-manager
   ### USER'S SELECTED MODULES
   # *** ONLY EDIT THIS LIS BELOW ***
   libexo
   xfwm4-themes
   xfwm4
   xfmedia
   xfdesktop
   

   As you can see, there are two sections: MANDATORY MODULES section and USER’S SELECTED MODULES section. The first section contains list of mandatory modules that are required by Xfce installation according to instructions explained the Xfce Installation guide.
   Next, remember to put only one module per line.
   Comments are recognized and should start with # character (as in Bash scripts), so you can comment/uncomment instead of add and remove them physically.
   You can browse Xfce SVN repository with Web browser and check available modules.

3. After you have xfce-svn-modules.lst file customized, you can start using the builder. First, I’d suggest to get usage message:

   ./xfce-svn-builder.sh --help

   I hope that every option is described well.

4. Now, you should download sources of Xfce modules you’ve put into the xfce-svn-modules.list file:

   ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst --checkout-only

   The script will read list of Xfce modules from the xfce-svn-modules.lst file and run svn checkout for do get sources on your disk from the Xfce repository.

5. After all modules are downloadd, you can build and install them on your Linux box. You have two choices:
   1. Run all targets- update, clean, build and install commands – automatically for every module:

      ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst

      or explicitely giving –all switch:

      ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst --all

      Both commands have the same effect – run all targets at once.

   2. Execute every step separately one by one using –*-only options:

      ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst --update-only

      ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst --clean-only

      ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst --build-only

      ./xfce-svn-builder.sh xfce-svn-modules.lst --install-only

After xfce-svn.builder.sh will finish the job with Done! messsage at the end, then you can find build.log file in the main sandbox directory, ~/dev/xfce in our case. This file include more verbose output from the builder.

Note, that if any target will fail for some module, then the builder will stop and send appropriate message on the console.

Download

xfce-svn-builder-1.1.tar.gz – latest version (27/05/2006)

License

This script is a Public Domain software. Freely redistributable and modifiable. Use at your own risk.