Development Team/Jhbuild
Sugar-jhbuild will automatically download the latest of Sugar's dependencies as well as Sugar itself directly from their source repositories, rather than relying on source packages that may have become stale. Below are generic instructions on how to use jhbuild to get up and running with Sugar.
Compatible Platforms
Jhbuild is quite demanding with regard to the packages and setup for the host Linux distribution. As a result there are only a few Linux distributions which are known to work with it.
See the distribution specific instructions for information about whether your distribution is currently supported. Other distros which have a recent-enough release (e.g. including the latest stable GNOME release) can be supported if someone is willing to maintain the dependencies for that distro release (in config/sysdeps).
Check distro-specific instructions
Many distributions have some quirks that need to be catered for and there are different package managing tools in use, so please check the page for your distribution before proceeding:
- Here are some videos of the Fedora jhbuild install process.
Some general advice
Note: Like most other Unix applications, sugar-jhbuild should never be run as root. It may easily screw up your whole system and/or break in unexpected ways if you do. If you get any permissions error, there's something wrong with your installation that should be fixed.
If you're stuck or if you get strange errors, feel free to ask for help on the #sugar IRC channel or the sugar-devel mailing list. Don't waste too much time chasing strange problems: usually it's caused by some basic, easy to fix problem. You might also want to check the bug tracker to see if it's a known issue.
Jhbuild FAQ
Q: <dgd> jhbuild build on fedora11 requires 29 packages but on Ubuntu904 38... should I be concerned with the difference in number? A: <sdziallas> dgd: this can be caused by different packaging policies...>>><dgd> sdziallas, ergo not a reason for concern, thanks!
definitely do not compile as root with jhbuild -- you'll run into funky problems -- Colin A. :)
Prequisites
- python
- The sugar-jhbuild command is a Python script, so you need the Python interpreter.
- git
- To get the source code of sugar-jhbuild itself and many other Sugar packages you need the git command-line tool from the distributed version control system of the same name.
- svn
- A few packages (as of September 2009, only squeak) do not yet use git, and you need the svn command-line tool from the Subversion version control system to get their source code.
These should be enough to run sugar-jhbuild on a typical Linux or Mac installation. Running sugar-jhbuild depscheck (see below) will probably list dozens of additional required packages.
Check out sugar-jhbuild
In a suitable directory (i.e. usually your user's home directory i.e. /home/yourusername/~), execute
git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/sugar-jhbuild/mainline.git sugar-jhbuild
- Make sure you are in the _user's_ home directory
- video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdr1bs4rQ_s
You'll know if it worked if you get something like this:
localhost ~]$ git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/sugar-jhbuild/mainline.git sugar-jhbuild Initialized empty Git repository in /home/denny/sugar-jhbuild/.git/ remote: Counting objects: 4688, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1998/1998), done. remote: Total 4688 (delta 2759), reused 4488 (delta 2638) Receiving objects: 100% (4688/4688), 1.86 MiB | 197 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (2759/2759), done.
Build sugar base system and its dependencies
Go into the directory you created and start the build. It takes about 30 minutes on a 1.6ghz machine with a wireless G connection.
cd sugar-jhbuild ./sugar-jhbuild update ./sugar-jhbuild depscheck ./sugar-jhbuild build
- Here are videos of the process. Before saying that Youtube is unfriendly to Linux because of the flash player, try installing it. Adobe flash works on my Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11 without hitch.
And now run it.
./sugar-jhbuild run
If it doesn't run or you have other problems read on.
Dealing with dependencies
sugar-jhbuild depscheck will print a list of required packages. They are part of the distribution you're using and should be installed using your favourite package manager (e.g. aptitude/synaptic for Debian, yum for Fedora).
If you notice that there's a package missing from the ./sugar-jhbuild depscheck
output (i.e. it's required for Sugar to work properly and not installed, but depscheck does not mention it), please file a bug report (login required first, but currently no automatic redirection to login page) against the sugar-jhbuild Component in the Sugar Labs bug tracker.
Some tips and known issues
- hulahop stopped building because I had installed a more recent version of xulrunner on my machine. The workaround was to
rm -rf ~/sugar-jhbuild/source/hulahop
and then run update and build again. - 25 Aug 9: hulahop doesnt' build correctly. http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-August/018540.html The 'fix' is running autoconf.
- Question. How do you run autoconf to fix this problem?
- when you get asked because of the error, choose the configure stage
- Question. How do you run autoconf to fix this problem?
Run Sugar
This command launches the Sugar emulator:
./sugar-jhbuild run
To exit the emulator, press Alt-Q.
Note that due to a bug in Xephyr your keyboard might not work as expected. A partial workaround is to run setxkbmap <keymap name>
in ~/.sugar/debug
(this file will be created on first run of Sugar). Most "regular" keys should work fine after that, some "special keys" (e.g. cursor up/down) might still refuse to operate as intended.
The "keymap name" usually is a two letter country code, e.g. "de" for german or "fr" for french.
Running multiple instances
To run multiple instances of sugar you can start it in the following way:
SUGAR_PROFILE=2 ./sugar-jhbuild run
This will create a new profile in ~/.sugar/, i.e. ~/.sugar/2/. You will find logs and configuration for this instance here. The default profile is ~/.sugar/default/
Run an individual activity
Within sugar, e.g. in Terminal, this command launches an individual activity for testing:
sugar-launch [bundle name]
You will see debug output appearing in Terminal.
Configure the mode and resolution of Sugar
You can make Sugar run fullscreen or specify a size (in pixels):
./sugar-jhbuild run sugar-emulator --fullscreen ./sugar-jhbuild run sugar-emulator --dimensions 1200x900
The default size of 800x600 is currently the minimum that should work without issues. I.e. activities should be tested to work in this mode (and in others as well).
Other commands
JHBuild has several other commands that can be useful for development. You can get an overview with:
./sugar-jhbuild --help-commands
A useful sequence of commands for building Sugar, from the Sugar mailing list: (Note that build will update first anyway, so run update separately if you want to see what changed more easily.)
./sugar-jhbuild update ./sugar-jhbuild build -a --clean ./sugar-jhbuild run
The use of -a and --clean flags are needed when a file is removed so that autogen.sh is run. Note: Some packages, e.g., squeak and etoys, don't have a make clean. Just ignore the error.
If build breaks after an update
The packages in sugar-jhbuild are the latest development versions, so you not only get the latest features, but also the latest breakages. The dependencies may change often, too, so be sure to run
./sugar-jhbuild depscheck
regularly and install the missing packages.
If your problem persists for more than a day (and even though you installed all missing packages), please file a bug report.
From within Sugar
Once you have Sugar running, here are some useful commands:
- Alt+Shift+F makes the frame appear and disappear
- Ctrl-Q quits an activity
- Alt+Shift+Q quits Sugar
- Alt+Shift+O opens the search
- Alt+Shift+R rotates the screen
Customize
To customize the build create a configuration file, named .sugar.jhbuildrc, in your home directory.
Write access to the repositories
If you have write access to the repositories you can add this (if your login name happens to be marco):
repos['gnome.org'] = ':ext:marco@cvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome' repos['mozilla.org'] = ':ext:marco%gnome.org@cvs.mozilla.org:/cvsroot' repos['dev.laptop.org'] = 'git+ssh://marco@dev.laptop.org/git/' repos['dev.laptop.org/projects'] = 'git+ssh://marco@dev.laptop.org/git/projects/'
Useful Internal Links
- Understanding Sugar Code
- Taxonomy -- explains the components of Sugar (Glucose, Fructose, Sugar, Starches)
- Sugar Instructions -- how to actually use Sugar once you have it running[1]
External links
- JHBuild manual
- Red Hat Magazine article: Introducing Sugar
- Tinderbox (see the "Sugar JHBuild" tab). The old sugar-jhbuild tinderbox.