Installation problems

[Stefan Mars <mars lysator liu se>]

Hi,

I have just spent a few hours trying to figure out how to install Gnome,
and I thought that someone here might be interested in some comments (and
some questions).

First I should mention that Gnome-0.12 doesn't work here at all, compile
failed at once, and so I reverted to the cvs repository.

The first thing I tried was 'cvs -z9 checkout gnome' according to the
instructions on the "getting started" www page. Basicly, running configure
in it made it complain that the sources were missing (which they were when
I looked for them).

Remembering something about a cvs split I went to look at the news, and
yep, there it was. Then I downloaded gnome-guile and gnome-objc, and tried
to compile the later one, which again didn't work because gnome-libs
wasn't installed. Studying the news-release about the cvs split I found
that I should first have installed gnome-libs, but it wasn't very clear to
me in the beginning. You might want to make that a lot clearer.

Checking the requirements of Gnome I noticed that I had to install about
half of the required packages, and most noteworthy both Guile and Slib.
Guile went ok, but I can't for my life figure out how to install Slib
since there are not special guile instructions. It would be a great aid if
you could have a page detailing how to install Slib for Guile.

And while we are on the subject of requirements, you mention that the
latest beta of xlockmore might be needed. Which beta? The development of
xlockmore doesn't come to a halt just because you say a beta is ok. Is
xlockmore 4.07beta ok, and therefor also 4.08, or is it 4.09 beta and not
4.08??

Also from the "getting started" requirements. Those libraries that are
mentioned, PNG and JPEG for example, are available from RedHat Labs, the
same page as Imlib. The file is called something like libgr-2*.tar.gz.
Also, gdk_imlib seems to be required, however isn't mentioned.

Ok, back to compile. Once I had the requirements sorted out (minus
installing slib) I began the compile, which went perfectly all the way to
ted_demo.c which bombed out about gdk_imlib not being available. I
couldn't find anywhere that gdk_imlib was a requirement, but apparently it
is. Noticed that all the libraries was compiled, and tried to do a make
install anyway, which did fine for the libs, they all installed, but the
configuration file needed by gnome-objc etc was not. So I had to get
gdk_imlib and install.

Then I had to make clean, rm config.cache, ./autogen.sh, make before it
worked. But lot of the stuff, like ted_demo.c for example, seem to be demo
programs, and I found it a bit irritating that they had to compile cleanly
for the libs to install properly (including the conf files).

Finally I went over to gnome-objc which compiled so fast that I first
thought something was wrong.

gnome-guile refuses to compile at all. It complains about line 85 in
guile-gtk/main.c, stating that main.x: no such file. Now I have given up,
gnome will ahve to wait a bit longer before I have time to deal with it
again (mostly because of upcoming exams).

But here is my tip/conclusion:

All problems I have encountered, witht he exception of the failed compile
of gnome-guile, could have been avoided had the installation instructions
been better.

1. Update the getting started page with:

2. Remove the "optional libraries part" and replace it with gdk_imlib
required.

3. Add a small help page for how guile and slib works together.

4. Give an exact version from which xlockmore is "uptodate", and not just
the latest beta.

5. Point out that gnome-libs must be compiled first (after the
requirements of course)

6 And probably a bunch of things which I have already forgotten...

But keep up the work. I am certain that sooner or later things like this
will be sorted out, and I am looking forward to the day when Gnome is on
everyone's desktop. And once I get it working I will start writing apps..

-Stefan

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Stefan Mars              |Student, Applied physics & Electrical engineering |
| Bjoernkaerrsgatan 15B:30 |Linkoping Institute of Technology                 |
| S-584 36 Linkoping       |                                                  |
| Sweden                   |Email: mars@lysator.liu.se Phone: +46 (0)13175384 |
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|         Maintainer of The THX Home Cinema Buyers Guide, located at          |
|               http://www.lysator.liu.se/%7Emars/thxguide.html               |
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