Xfce4.8 on sid - Now with .debs!

[mzilikazi]

Edit Now available in Debian experimental.

Edit: 01.06.2010 You can still compile as written below but it's just not necessary as Hadret has built and uploaded the latest to his debian repo. (A big round of applause for Hadret please...)

As of 01.08.2010 these are required from Experimental

libglib2.0-0
libglib2.0-bin
libglib2.0-dev

See here for details.

Once Xfce4.8 is available from your favorite repo this entire thread will be irrelevant but if you, like me, simply couldn't wait then this is for you.
*Note*
You should most likely remove everything Xfce4 that is currently on your system or I would expect some conflicts. The .debs created with checkinstall are by no means the equivalent of proper Debian packages. In fact the names and packages will be different. There for it would also be advisable to remove these same .debs prior to installing the proper Debian packages once available.

Edit:
Dec 27, 2010 Fixed typos, corrected build order per feedback.
Dec 28, 2010 Added Notifications and Power Management. Reorganized, cleaned up.
Dec 29, 2010 Added Xfburn

Required for checkinstall:
My changes to /etc/checkinstallrc were done with sed substituting my actual username for $USER:

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su
sed -i 's/INSTALL=0/INSTALL=1/' checkinstallrc
sed -i 's/PAK_DIR=""/PAK_DIR="/home/$USER/Xfce4.8/debs/' /etc/checkinstallrc
sed -i 's/DPKG_FLAGS=""/DPKG_FLAGS="--force-overwrite"/' /etc/checkinstallrc

It's possible that you'll require .debs not listed here but everything should be available via apt-get.

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apt-get install libnotify-dev libfm-dev gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-bin libstartup-notification0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libglib2.0-dev libglade2-dev libwnck-dev librsvg2-dev libtool checkinstall unp


BTW I have these from Experimental - not sure if that's really required...:
libglib2.0-0 (2.27.5-1) ...
libglib2.0-bin (2.27.5-1) ...
libglib2.0-dev (2.27.5-1)

I like to make a working directory (but it isn't required)

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mkdir Xfce4.8pre2
cd Xfce4.8pre2

Now we get the source tarballs:

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wget http://archive.xfce.org/src/libs/garcon/0.1/garcon-0.1.4.tar.bz2
wget http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs/xfce-4.8pre2.tar.bz2
unp *
mv src xfce4.8pre2-core # Not strictly required

Although I used checkinstall it certainly isn't required. If you prefer not to use checkinstall simply edit the build script to use make install instead of checkinstall --options and skip the echo '' > description-pak bit. Otherwise everything's the same.

Create a little checkinstall build script to save some typing. Just copy paste using your own email address.

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cat >> build << EOF
#!/bin/bash
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
checkinstall --maintainer=your.email@mail.com --nodoc --pkggroup=xfce
EOF
chmod +x build
su

( technically, only checkinstall really needs to be ran as root - you can use sudo if you like)

GARCON Required

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cd garcon
echo "freedesktop.org compliant menu implementation" > description-pak
../build
cp data/xfce/xfce-applications.menu /etc/xdg/menus

* You could do this cp operation with checkinstall as well.

Build Xfce4.8pre2

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cd ../xfce4.8pre2-core
unp *.bz2

cd xfce4-dev-tools-4.7.3/
echo 'Xfce4 development tools' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../libxfce4util-4.7.4
echo 'Basic utility library for Xfce4' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfconf-4.7.4
echo 'Client-server configuration storage and query system' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../libxfcegui4-4.7.0
echo 'Various Gtk widgets for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../libxfce4ui-4.7.5
echo 'Library to share commonly used Xfce widgets' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../exo-0.5.5
echo 'Extension library for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfce4-panel-4.7.6
echo 'Panel for Xfce4' > description-pak
mkdir -p /usr/lib/xfce4/panel/plugins
../../build

cd ../Thunar-1.1.5
echo 'Modern file manager for the Unix/Linux desktop' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../thunar-vfs-1.1.1
echo 'File system abstraction library for Thunar'  > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfce4-settings-4.7.6
echo 'Provides access to settings of XFce4 components' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfce4-session-4.7.2
mkdir -p /usr/lib/xfce4/session/splash-engines/
echo 'Session manager for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfdesktop-4.7.4
echo 'Desktop manager for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfwm4-4.7.3
echo 'Window manager for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfce-utils-4.7.3
echo 'Utilities and scripts for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../xfce4-appfinder-4.7.1
echo 'Application finder for Xfce' > description-pak
../../build

cd ../gtk-xfce-engine-2.6.0
echo 'Xfce Gtk+-2.0 engine' > description-pak
../../build

The Xfce4 build order isn't up to date. Above is (obviously) the build order I used.

Not required but useful- (and verified working w/ Xfce4.8pre2)

THUNAR-VOLMAN Not required but you really do want this.

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wget http://git.xfce.org/apps/thunar-volman/snapshot/thunar-volman-0.5.3.tar.bz2
unp thunar-volman-0.5.3.tar.bz2
cd ../thunar-volman-0.5.3
echo "Volume management for Thunar" > description-pak
./autogen.sh
../build

NOTIFICATIONS

This is built slightly differently w/ autogen.sh which also runs ./configure w/ your options

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wget http://git.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-notifyd/snapshot/xfce4-notifyd-0.2.0.tar.bz2
unp xfce4-notifyd-0.2.0.tar.bz2
cd xfce4-notifyd-0.2.0/
echo 'Notification daemon for Xfce4' > description-pak
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
checkinstall --maintainer=your.email@mail.com --nodoc --pkggroup=xfce

This will add a new configuration item to xfce4-settings-manager.

XFCE4-POWER-MANAGER

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wget http://archive.xfce.org/src/apps/xfce4-power-manager/1.0/xfce4-power-manager-1.0.2.tar.bz2
unp xfce4-power-manager-1.0.2.tar.bz2
cd xfce4-power-manager-1.0.2
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
checkinstall --maintainer=your.email@mail.com --nodoc --pkggroup=xfce

This also adds a new configuration item to xfce4-settings-manager

Xfburn
If you've built Xfce4.8 you don't want to install Xfburn from Debian repos since that pulls in several pieces of Xfce4.6.
You can build libraries from http://www.libburnia-project.org/ but those already available in Debian work fine.

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apt-get install libburn-dev libburn4 libisoburn-dev libisoburn1 libisofs libisofs-dev libisofs6

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git clone http://git.xfce.org/git/apps/xfburn
cd xfburn
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --enable-thunar-vfs

*Note
If after running autogen.sh make gives you this error:

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xsltproc -nonet http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl xfburn.xml
I/O error : Attempt to load network entity http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl
warning: failed to load external entity "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl"

Use the sed:

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sed -i 's/-nonet//' docs/Makefile

Then continue on

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make
checkinstall --maintainer=your.email@mail.com --nodoc --pkggroup=xfce --pkgversion=svn-12.28.10 --pkgrelease=0.4.3

You can of course change the pkgversion & pkgrelease values, in fact you'll be forced to change pkgversion to something since the default vaule passed to checkinstall simply won't work.

LINKS

More Xfce stuff to be built here:
http://git.xfce.org/apps
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel-plugins/start

Garcon
http://archive.xfce.org/src/libs/garcon/0.1/

Mirror links for fat tarballs
http://gezeiten.org/post/2010/12/Xfce-4.8pre2-released!
http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre2/fat_tarballs/

Re: checkinstall
The description-pak file contents were pulled from the respective README files in the source or the Xfce web site.

Changes to my /etc/checkinstallrc

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# location defined for the package type
PAK_DIR="/home/g/Xfce4.8/debs"
# dpkg optional flags
DPKG_FLAGS="--force-overwrite"
# Install the package or just create it?
INSTALL=1

If you don't use the --prefix=/usr switch for configure do this:

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echo "include /usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf

There are probably some typos.

[mephjones]

Thanks! So what are your thoughts on 4.8? Any noticeable bugs? Any noticeable improvements over 4.6?

[Branimir]

any screenshots? what are the new...err..features? is xfwm compositing still lightweight and simple as in 4.6 ?

edit: nevermind, i found the video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRuX_87VFjI

cool, the xfce-panel seems to be customizable just as i wanted, hehe.

[mzilikazi]

Indeed there are some new things. Since release Thunar 1.1.0, Thunar has had support for network flesystems through gvfs. This is huge (for some anyway). Read what Jannis Pohlmann has to say about it. Another blog mentions remote filesystem support
Below is a brief summary of the response from Jannis

most of these features are available only because of the folks at GNOME.
I may not agree with all design decisions made in GIO and especially not in GVfs
but overall the APIs are pretty good. ThunarVFS definitely is more lightweight than GIO/GVfs.
It has file:// and trash:// hard-coded in very efficient ways and the API is more to the point as well.
There’s also no D-Bus or DeviceKit-disks/gnome-disk-utility involved which makes it somewhat faster and requires less dependencies.
But leightweightness is not everything of course. GIO is more flexible, extensible and is used indirectly because of GTK+ anyway,
so it’s fair to say that it has a brighter future than ThunarVFS (which is being deprecated at the moment).

All of the core components have been ported to GIO however not all of the plugins and goodies have.

Some of the notable fixes/changes gleaned directly from source of core components:

libxfce4ui
- has hotkey support to popup Xfdesktop menu

Xfce4-appfinder is a complete rewrite
- now launch items with startup notification
- Port the libxfce4menu code to garcon.
- Port to libxfce4ui and gio.
- New in this version is the possibility to pass a specific menu file directly to xfce4-appfinder
-- xfce4-appfinder /etc/xdg/menus/gnomecc.menu

xfdesktop
- Port xfdesktop to GIO and drop the dependency on thunar-vfs.
- Drop dependency on libxfcegui4 and use libxfce4ui
- HIDDEN CUSTOMISATIONS - Check the README for xfdesktop version 4.5 for further details. Briefly:
--If you're using the icon view, and would like to change how the text looks,
you have three things you can change: the opacity (transparency) of the
rounded text background, the color of the rounded text background, and the
color of the text itself. This is done in ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (preferrably ~/.gtkrc.mine)

xfce4-panel
- Depends on garcon 0.1.4
- Fix 'add launcher' desktop file.
- Add window DND to the pager in tasklist.
- Add DND from application menu to panel

xfce4-session
- Do not try "unix-session" authorization with PolicyKit as this
seems to be either broken or not implemented in PolicyKit (bug #6817).
This fixes suspend/hibernate in xfce4-session-logout.

xfwm4
- Unshade windows when given focus with Alt-Tab

Xfce4.8 Release schedule:
http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.8/schedule

Alot has changed in Xfce4. For more info read the NEWS and/or README files in the source.

[nadir]

Good. Thanks.
(rather very good. I tried that a few weeks ago, following the xfce-site, and it was not much fun).

I did copy and paste, and there don't seem to be typos. Check this one:

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../xfce4-settings-4.7.6

inside of code-block: XFCE4.8; i think the leading cd is missing.

I am not able to build thunar-volman before building the xfce-apps.
libgudev-1.0-dev seems to be a dependency for thunar-volman.

I got confused and mixed the order of building.
I didn't get a useful error message.
I added && between the commands in the `build` script, which was of help (configure failed, i got the error message and could figure it out). That might be an idea.

Bad news: i can't install it:

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 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/icons/hicolor/icon-theme.cache', which is also in package libxfcegui4 4.7.0-1

I tried different variations to install it (removed exo, removed libxfcegui....), but that error keeps coming up for several packages. No google results for me.
(trying it with `dpkg -i --force-overwrite`, according to the man-page. We will see... seems to have worked great.
htop says 110Mb and it seems very snappy )

[mzilikazi]

Check this one:

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../xfce4-settings-4.7.6

inside of code-block: XFCE4.8; i think the leading cd is missing.

Fixed

I am not able to build thunar-volman before building the xfce-apps.
libgudev-1.0-dev seems to be a dependency for thunar-volman.

Fixed (relocated to end of build order)

I added && between the commands in the `build` script, which was of help (configure failed, i got the error message and could figure it out). That might be an idea.

Excellent idea - Fixed

Bad news: i can't install it:

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 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/icons/hicolor/icon-theme.cache', which is also in package libxfcegui4 4.7.0-1

I tried different variations to install it (removed exo, removed libxfcegui....), but that error keeps coming up for several packages. No google results for me.
(trying it with `dpkg -i --force-overwrite`, according to the man-page. We will see... seems to have worked great.

Yeah - that was unavoidable and why we set --force-overwrite in /etc/checkinstallrc

htop says 110Mb and it seems very snappy )

It is fast - definitely faster than Gnome on my system anyway.

Thanks for the feedback!

[nadir]

You are right about /etc/checkinstallrc.
At least a prof that i did copy and paste without much reading. So: good guide

I don't know why the editing of checkinstallrc didn't work for me: i guess INSTALL=0 should have taken care of autoinstalling the resulting deb, which didn't work neither (Some kind of pebkac...).
At least i now know that my solution was correct (bit of sweaty hands for me).

Thanks again.

[mzilikazi]

Added Notifications & Power Management build instructions to the original post. Screens below.

[Hadret]

I believe Debian Xfce Group is already working on Xfce 4.8, I think they might wait for official 4.8 release to push it into experimental. Nevertheless, there are debian/* available in SVN (so you'll need subversion to download them): http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-xfce/desktop/branches/experimental/#_desktop_branches_experimental_. I haven't checked, but it looks like there are all needed packages (some of them are in different sections, like Xfburn, for example, is in goodies). So, you may download sources and try to build proper Debian packages (using dpkg-buildpackage, debuild, pbuilder etc.).

Example 1:

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svn co svn://anonymous@svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-xfce/desktop/branches/experimental/garcon

Example 2:

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svn co svn://anonymous@svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-xfce/goodies/branches/experimental/xfburn

There also might be some unofficial Debian repository, but I guess Debian Xfce Group mailinglist would be good place to ask (:

This also may be useful:

We only keep the debian/ directory of xfce packages in subversion. Our packages which use CDBS use its simple-patchsys when patches to upstream are needed. Otherwise we tend to use dpatch though upstream has an excellent record of accepting sane patches.

It is necessary to create a ../tarballs directory with the .orig.gz tarballs, which are all downloadable at once as follows:
cd scripts
./get-source.pl [desktop|goodies]

To start the real process:
$ svn-buildpackage --svn-ignore-new -rfakeroot -us -uc

Note that every option accepted by dpkg-buildpackage is accepted by svn-buildpackage too. (In the former example: -rfakeroot -us -uc).

For more detailed instructions, see our HOWTOs.

If you want to rebuild Xfce entirely you can use the pbuilder script available in scripts/pbuilder/pdebuild-sources.sh though you probably want to change the MIRROR= line in pdebuild.conf to point to a local apt-proxy first. The script creates a sid chroot, then builds everything in this chroot, using previously built packages to satisfy dependencies. The script takes an argument, which can be:
desktop (build every desktop package)
goodies (build every goodies package, you should build desktop packages first)
clean (clean every package built)
The script resumes itself where it was interrupted. If you want to only rebuild a package, just remove the xfce/build/<packagename> file and restart ./pdebuild-sources.sh

You can also build only one package in pbuilder using the following syntax: ./pdebuild-source.sh [desktop|goodies] [package]

source: http://pkg-xfce.alioth.debian.org


[EDITED]
There's new pre (3) release out: http://www.xfce.org/about/news?id=26

[churchyard]

I would really apriciate, if anyone creates repository for this. For alphas and betas of 4.6 it was on http://www.corsac.net/index.php?rub=xfce but now, it is not.

[Hadret]

I would really apriciate, if anyone creates repository for this. For alphas and betas of 4.6 it was on http://www.corsac.net/index.php?rub=xfce but now, it is not.

Actually, I'm working on it, but probably there won't be builds for i386 architecture* (it's about resources, compilation and my time). All of work was made by Debian Xfce team, I just put those things together. Also, there (at least today) won't be any goodies, only "main" Xfce (as in here: http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre3/src). I'll provide repository link later on.

* - although there will be source repository, so you will be able to rebuild it by yourself.

BTW I have these from Experimental - not sure if that's really required...:
libglib2.0-0 (2.27.5-1) ...
libglib2.0-bin (2.27.5-1) ...
libglib2.0-dev (2.27.5-1)

It's required for at least building exo-0.5.6.

[Branimir]

Well, I compiled it as stated in the first post of this topic, and while I was anxious to see what the next Xfce will be, I think there is no need for rush, pre3 is already out, and final release in a week or two. By that time I hope someone will take care of the packaging.

I mean, I can put debs I have compiled (i386) somewhere on fileshare but I don't think it's the right way to do these things.

[Hadret]

Well, I compiled it as stated in the first post of this topic, and while I was anxious to see what the next Xfce will be, I think there is no need for rush, pre3 is already out, and final release in a week or two. By that time I hope someone will take care of the packaging.

I believe packaging is already done by Debian Xfce team (I'm using their debianization and almost all of the packages are in the latest version) so they are waiting for final release to push it into official Debian repositories.

I mean, I can put debs I have compiled (i386) somewhere on fileshare but I don't think it's the right way to do these things.

If it's an checkinstall made packages, you shouldn't -- they might break someone else's OS. I make packages, as I mentioned earlier, using debianization made by Debian Xfce team and I'm building them properly, which means I'm using pbuilder for this task. I don't want to wait for release and I'm making packages myself cause I want to switch to Xfce and, obviously, I want to use latest release (:

[Branimir]

If it's an checkinstall made packages, you shouldn't -- they might break someone else's OS. I make packages, as I mentioned earlier, using debianization made by Debian Xfce team and I'm building them properly, which means I'm using pbuilder for this task. I don't want to wait for release and I'm making packages myself cause I want to switch to Xfce and, obviously, I want to use latest release (:

Yes those are checkinstall made packages as described in the first post.

If someone is really eager to try it ASAP, I recommend compiling it by yourself, as noted in the topic, I'm not by all means a linux guru or a programming expert, I just followed the instructions step by step. After all it's just for testing purposes and to give it look at what has 4.8 become and how it works/looks like.

Btw I welcome the comeback of custom menu. Though xfce4-panel has transparency now with Xfwm compositing enabled, I think I'll still use tint2 instead.

[Hadret]

Alright, here's repo:

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deb http://hadret.rootnode.net/debian/ UNRELEASED main
#deb-src http://hadret.rootnode.net/debian/ UNRELEASED main #optional

GPG key:

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wget -O - http://hadret.rootnode.net/debian/duckbill.key | apt-key add -

Packages list:
exo
garcon
gtk2-engines-xfce
libxfce4ui
libxfce4util
libxfcegui4
orage
thunar-vfs
thunar
tumbler
xfce4-appfinder
xfce4-dev-tools
xfce4-panel
xfce4-session
xfce4-settings
xfce4-terminal
xfce4-utils
xfce4
xfconf
xfdesktop4
xfwm4

And from goodies:
ristretto
squeeze
thunar-media-tags-plugin
thunar-volman
xfburn
xfce4-notifyd
xfce4-power-manager

Also in my PPA unstable branch there's latest midori and in experimental branch there's xfce4-indicator-plugin (latest release: 0.2.0) and xfce4-globalmenu-plugin.

What's missing?
- Many plugins;
- Meta-packages (xfce4 and xfce4-goodies, you need to install packages "by hand");
- i386 packages (only amd64 provided, but there's source repository);

The good things:
- After Xfce 4.8 release and when Debian Xfce team will pull packages to the Debian official repositories, there should be smooth upgrade;
- No need to build anything by yourself;
- Proper packages made by Debian Xfce team and built with pbuilder in chroot environment;