Re: [gnome-flashback] Building Flashback with jhbuild

[Philipp Kaluza <floss ghostroute eu>]

Dear Lanoxx,

Am 01.08.2013 09:00, schrieb Lanoxx:
> Hello Flashback users,
>
> I was trying to build flashback yesterday with jhbuild, but I ran into
> a few problems. If anyone has experience with building the flashback
> components please let me know.

I'm sorry to say, I've dropped the ball a bit on the jhbuild stuff - was
too busy with RL.

I do however have the following suggestions for you:
> 1. I set the moduleset to 'gnome-world-3.10'
I haven't followed what's happening in the 3.10 release, but
gnome-world-3.8 used to (roughly) work, and since we didn't branch for
3.8, should still target gnome-panel master.

> 2. I checked out the latest version of jhbuild from git, followed by
> ./autogen.sh, make, make install
> 3. I ran sanitycheck and bootstrap which printed no errors
> 4. I ran jhbuild build meta-gnome-flashback, which told me the following:
>
> Required packages:
>   System installed packages which are too old:
>     libcanberra (libcanberra.pc, required=0.30, installed=0.29)

Normally I find that it's a better idea to get newer system packages
where available (e.g. from Debian sid), than to start jhbuilding these
as well. But they (canberra et al.) should still be available in a
non-standard moduleset.

>   No matching system package installed:
>     python2-devel (python2.pc, required=2.5)
>     libicu (icu-i18n.pc, required=4)
> jhbuild build: Required system dependencies not installed. Install
> using the command 'jhbuild sysdeps --install' or to ignore system
> dependencies use command-line option --nodeps
>
> I verified that python2.pc is actually available and python2.7 is
> installed.
Good thing, the python .pc file (or its missing symlink) bit me in the
*** a few times.

> If I use the --nodeps option, then jhbuild fails when building cairo.
> What confuses me is that the source code for the gnome-panel and
> metacity has not changed significantly in the recent month, and I am
> running Ubuntu 12.10 which is fairly recent, so why do I need newer
> versions of the packages above?
You shouldn't. It's a function of how the dependencies in jhbuild are
defined (the moduleset just targets a newer cairo by now etc.) - see
above. You could also try to reduce jhbuild's workload somewhat by
installing a lot of -dev packages.

> Also why is jhbuild trying to build over 50 packages for the
> meta-gnome-flashback module?
Because we were targeting a "new" (in 3.8 timeframe) gtk,
gnome-settings-daemon, etc.

_But_ you/we could try to craft a specific module set that just builds
metacity and gnome-panel based on any current-or-recent stack of gnome
components, including system stacks.

Given our current development speed (or lack thereof) in the flashback
subproject, I'm beginning to think this might be a good idea anyhow.

> I would really like to help testing flashback and maybe helpout with
> patches but so far, each time I tried to build it, jhbuild gave me a
> hard time.
Ack, my experience as well.

Please keep letting us know how you get on.

I need to run two more distribution upgrades in preparation of DebConf,
but then might have some spare background cycles (and i/o-ops) for a
full jhbuild run in the next days.
Any problems you could already solve will help me as well. :)

Cheers,
  Philipp