wiki:GNOME

Version 9 (modified by rhwood@…, 16 years ago) (diff)

Add notes on working sound in Leopard.

GNOME

GNOME is a project, a foundation, a developer's platform (with a related set of language bindings), and a user's desktop environment. New releases of the platform and desktop are released at the same time.

Version Scheme

The GNOME Foundation uses the version scheme where odd minor versions indicate that a package or product is a development version, such that GNOME 2.15.x is a development version, considered unstable, while 2.14.x is a release version that is considered stable.

Running GNOME

The GNOME desktop may be run by issuing the command gnome-session & from an xterm, or by adding the command exec gnome-session to your ~/.xinitrc file. If you use dbus (version >= 0.60), you may prefer to use the command exec dbus-launch gnome-session in ~/.xintrc to allow GNOME applications to take advantage of the dbus interprocess communications system.

Environment

The environment that GNOME runs in requires that the following variables be set. These are shown with the values for a default MacPorts installation:

XDG_DATA_DIRS
/opt/local/share (if someone knows why, please tell us)
XDG_DATA_HOME
/opt/local/share (if someone knows why, please tell us)
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
/opt/local/etc/xdg (if someone knows why, please tell us)
ESPEAKER
localhost (this allows sound to play at least on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard)

See the sample .xinitrc files for examples of how to set these variables.

Sample .xinitrc Files

The following ~/.xinitrc requires Apple's X11? and dbus:

 # make sure X11 is MacPorts and /usr/local aware
 PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin
 export PATH
 
 # make the freedesktop menu entries work
 export XDG_DATA_DIRS=/opt/local/share
 export XDG_DATA_HOME=/opt/local/share
 export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/opt/local/etc/xdg
 
 # enable sound
 export ESPEAKER=localhost

 # use Apple's window manager
 exec quartz-wm &
 
 # start GNOME
 exec dbus-launch gnome-session

This ~/.xinitrc works with any X11? and uses GNOME's builtin window manager, Metacity:

 # make sure X11 is MacPorts and /usr/local aware
 PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin
 export PATH
 
 # make the freedesktop menu entries work
 export XDG_DATA_DIRS=/opt/local/share
 export XDG_DATA_HOME=/opt/local/share
 export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/opt/local/etc/xdg
 
 # enable sound
 export ESPEAKER=localhost

 # use GNOME's window manager
 exec metacity &
 
 # start GNOME
 exec gnome-session

Note that the second sample ~/.xinitrc also does not require that dbus be installed. Feel free to mix and match the differences between these two sample files to suit your own needs.

Settings

GNOME settings are stored in a number of hidden directories in your home directory:

.fonts.cache-1
.gconf
.gconfd
.gnome
.gnome2
.gnome2_private
.gtkrc-1.2-gnome2
.nautilus

On MacPorts

The GNOME ports are mostly a mix from the GNOME 2.14.x and 2.16.0 release versions, although not all packages in the release have been ported as of yet. Based on what happened when GNOME 2.12.0 was released, we aim to provide a workable GNOME release based on x.y.x where y is even and x is greater than 0.

Assistance

email

The macports-users mailing list is available for your assistance, and is the best place to resolve issues running the MacPorts distribution of GNOME. Note that since most of the GNOME ports are maintained by macports-dev@… that mailing list also gets most bug reports for our GNOME ports.

Meta Ports

A meta port is a port that is simply a collection of dependencies on other ports. There are a number of GNOME-oriented meta ports in MacPorts:

gnome
This meta port is currently a shorthand for gnome-desktop-suite with some variants for additional software.
gnome-desktop-suite
This meta port contains all the software packages that the GNOME Foundation distributes as part of the GNOME desktop. This meta port also includes the gnome-platform-suite.
gnome-platform-suite
This meta port contains all the libraries and support programs that GNOME software written in the C language may require to run. This corresponds to the GNOME Developer's Platform from the GNOME Foundation.
gnome-bindings-suite
This meta port is a collection gnome-bindings-language meta ports that include the libraries required for GNOME programs in C++, Perl, and Python to run. This contains the GNOME Foundation's officially supported languages with the exception of Java.

Variants

The variants +with_gnome and +without_gnome affect how ports build in the DarwinPorts system vis-a-vis GNOME.

+with_gnome
adds support for building the port with GNOME hooks. This variant is made a global variant with the installation of the port gnome-desktop-suite. (A couple of ports use the variant +gnome instead.)
+without_gnome
builds the port without GNOME hooks

TODOs

GNOME Tasks I am migrating the GNOME TODOs to the Trac tickets system as tasks. The following TODOs are specific to GNOME packaging on MacPorts:

  • Fix scrollkeeper handling. See bug report 6912 for DarwinPorts implementation details and see gnome-doc-utils Migration for GNOME packaging status. --rhwood 10:00, 12 April 2006 (GMT)
  • Move the Packaging Status page from .Mac to OpenDarwin servers. --rhwood 02:10, 25 January 2006 (GMT)
  • Create a gnome-platform-extras port containing additional libraries that would enhance GTK/GNOME-based applications without requiring the installation of packages from gnome-desktop-suite. --rhwood 02:10, 25 January 2006 (GMT)
  • Create a gnome-desktop-extras port containing additional applications that extend the GNOME desktop. --rhwood 02:10, 25 January 2006 (GMT)
  • Create a gnome-office-suite port containing the applications in the GNOME Office. --rhwood 02:10, 25 January 2006 (GMT)
  • Create a gnome-office-extras port containing additional office-type applications. --rhwood 02:10, 25 January 2006 (GMT)
  • Create a gnome-devel-suite port containing GNOME development tools. --rhwood 02:10, 25 January 2006 (GMT)

Specific Ports

gdm

gdm uses PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) to authenticate users. PAM is a core part of the Mac OS X security system, and as such there is a manual process that needs to be completed before gdm can be used:

In Terminal:

cd /etc/pam.d
sudo cp login gdm

This creates a file that allows logging into gdm to behave basically identical to logging into Mac OS X using the standard means. Tweaking the settings of /etc/pam.d/gdm will change the authentication possibilities for gdm.

Additional Resources

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