JHBuild and GNOME

This section provides guidance on building, installing and running GNOME.

Building GNOME

To build GNOME some development packages are required. This includes:

  • DocBook XML DTD and XSLT stylesheets. These need to be registered in the XML catalog (/etc/xml/catalog).

  • X libraries.

  • libsmbclient from Samba (used for browsing Windows networks).

  • libbz2 from bzip2.

  • libpng, libjpeg and libtiff (used for image loading).

If installing distribution packages, and if applicable for your distribution, install the corresponding “dev” or “devel” packages. A list of package names for different distributions is maintained on the GNOME wiki.

Running a Single GNOME Application

This section details how to run a single GNOME application. The application will run within the current desktop environment. To run the application within the complete JHBuild GNOME see Running the GNOME Desktop Environment.

Launch a JHBuild shell. The JHBuild shell has all the necessary environment variables set.

$ jhbuild shell

Verify the correct application will be run. For example:

$ which gedit
/home/wanda/jhbuild/install/bin/gedit

Run the application:

$ gedit &

Alternatively, run the application using the run command:

$ jhbuild run gedit

Running the GNOME Desktop Environment

Create a new user account to run the JHBuild GNOME. Running JHBuild GNOME using a different user account is recommended to avoid problems caused by user settings stored in the home directory. This manual refers to the new account as gnomedev.

Setup JHBuild on the new gnomedev account. Copy or soft-link ~/.config/jhbuildrc and ~/.local/bin/jhbuild to gnomedev home directory.

Open a terminal as the user gnomedev. Permanently add ~/.local/bin to the PATH variable, run the following command:

$ echo 'PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin' >> ~/.bashrc

Test JHBuild works:

$ jhbuild run pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --modversion
2.20.1

Setup GNOME to run from the display manager

Build and install JHBuild GNOME.

Enable system services. JHBuild GNOME will use the /usr/bin system D-Bus daemon and the system services within /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/. JHBuild GNOME will use the JHBuild session D-Bus daemon and the services within ~/jhbuild/install//share/dbus-1/services/. Replace ~/jhbuild/install with GNOME install prefix in the command below:

$ rm -rf ~/jhbuild/install/var/run/dbus
$ ln -s /var/run/dbus ~/jhbuild/install/var/run/dbus
$ rm -rf ~/jhbuild/install/var/lib/dbus/machine-id
$ ln -s /var/lib/dbus/machine-id ~/jhbuild/install/var/lib/dbus/machine-id

Create a GNOME startup script at /usr/bin/gnome-jhbuild-session with the following, replacing ~/jhbuild/install with GNOME install prefix:

#!/bin/sh

GNOME=~/jhbuild/install

GDK_USE_XFT=1
XDG_DATA_DIRS=$XDG_DATA_DIRS:$GNOME/share
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS:$GNOME/etc/xdg

jhbuild run gnome-session

Make the file /usr/bin/gnome-jhbuild-session executable:

$ chmod a+x /usr/bin/gnome-jhbuild-session

To add a new session entry in the display manager, create /usr/share/xsessions/gnome-jhbuild.desktop and enter:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=GNOME (JHBuild)
Comment=This session logs you into GNOME testing session
TryExec=/usr/bin/gnome-jhbuild-session
Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-jhbuild-session
Icon=
Type=Application

Restart gdm.

Running GNOME from the display manager

To run the JHBuild GNOME, select the GNOME (JHBuild) session at the display manager before entering gnomedev login credentials. If successful, JHBuild GNOME will be displayed. If unsuccessful, check the log file. The log file will be located at ~gnomedev/.cache/gdm/session.log or ~gnomedev/.xsession-errors.

Static Analysis

JHBuild supports running static analysis tools on the code in modules as they’re built. To enable this, set the static_analyzer configuration variable to True in the .jhbuildrc configuration file.

If enabled, every time a module is built using JHBuild, the build process will be wrapped in a static analyzer, which will generate a report of any problems it finds with the code. These reports are saved as HTML files in subdirectories of /tmp/jhbuild_static_analyzer (by default; the path can be changed using the static_analyzer_outputdir configuration variable).

Static analysis currently only works for modules which use autotools as their build system. It requires the scan-build program to be installed, although the command it uses can be changed by modifying the static_analyzer_template configuration variable.