Cygwin GNOME 1.4 Beta2

Release Notes


Now, I proudly announce the beta2 release of Cygwin GNOME 1.4 binary packages!
This is a totolly rebuild of nearly all the GNOME libraries,
and most of the core desktop applications are upgraded to the latest version.
All rebuild are based upon Steven O'Brien's latest patches and instruction .

I tested it on my P3 800MHz PC with 192M RAM, I'm satisfied the the stablity
and preformance, there are great improvements compared to the 1.4beta1 release!


Now we support installation via Cygwin setup. Over 120 packages are available.
And setup.ini is generated by the upset script got from Cygwin team, then it should be more reliable.

New Baseline

This time we upgraded our platform to the latest Cygwin net release,
for less compatibility issues.

We used a snapshot on 20030305, to be precise:
    cygwin-1.3.20,
    gcc-3.2-3,
    binutils-20021117-1,
    gettext-0.11.5-1,
and    
    popt-1.6.4-4,
    jpeg-6b-7,
    tiff-3.5.7-1,
    libungif-4.1.0-2,
    libpng-1.2.5-1,
    ncurses-5.2-8,
    libiconv-1.8-2,    
    zlib-1.1.4-1,
    db3.1-3.1.17-2,
    guile-1.6.0,
    bzip2-1.0.2,
    gdbm-1.8.0-4,
    libdb3.1-devel-3.1.17-2,
    XFree86-prog-4.2.0,
    XFree86-lib-4.2.0-3,
    perl-5.6.1-2,
etc.    
 

BUILDING

Nearly all GNOME libraries and core applications are rebuilt on the new baseline,
started from scratch.

All rebuild are based upon Steven O'Brien's latest patches and instruction.
(Refer to http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steven.obrien2 for detail info),
with a few little modifications:
 - gal upgraded to 0.23
 - librep upgraded to 0.16.1
 - sawfish upgraded to 1.2-gtk1
 - mc built with --with-samba
 - gnome-libs built with Xlocale
 - gtkhtml 1.0.4 also provided.
 - gtkhtml 1.1.x upgraded to 1.1.8.
 - XIM support is enabled in gtkhtml-1.0.4 and gtkhtml-1.1.8

The patches for gal-0.23, librep-0.16.1, sawfish-1.2-gtk1, gtkhtml-1.0.4/1.1.8
are available from the Package Reports pages:
http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/reports/index.html

Imlib and gdk-pixbuf now is built into dynamic image loader modules mode,
as the fork()->vfork() changes greatly reduced the chances of remapping errors,
and now rebase is a standard package of Cygwin net release.


PACKAGING

Some package are split into small packages, so that when we fixed bugs in one
or more components, only a small part is needed to be re-downloaded and installed.

For example, gnome-core is split into gnome-core, gnome-core-locale,
gnome-help-browser,  gnome-session,  gnome-terminal, gnome-panel, gnome-panel-devel
and gnome-panel-docs-intl.

Another example is gnome-games, in which each game is packed into one binary tarball.

Mc is renamed as gmc/gmc-gnome to avoid package name conflict with the one from
Cygwin net release. Here gmc means GNU Midnight Commander. Sorry if is makes confusion.

PACKAGE LIST

To highlight the new release in the messed-up SourceForge File List page,
I marked the release number as 9 for most package, if there is no version upgrading.
(For example, the new release of audiofile is audiofile-0.2.3-9,
the same to gnome-libs-1.4.2-9, ORBit-0.5.17-9. But as for imlib, we upgraded
it from 1.9.13 to 1.9.14, the new release is imlib-1.9.14-1.)
Only one exception: gtk+-1.2.10-19.

Core GNOME libraries: (all rebuilt on the new platform)
    audiofile-0.2.3-9
    esound-0.2.29-9
    glib-1.2.10-9
    gtk+-1.2.10-19
    imlib-1.9.14-1    (upgraded!)
    gtk-engines-0.12-1 (and gtk-themes-0.11)  (upgraded!)
    ORBit-0.5.17-9
    libxml-1.8.17-9
    oaf-0.6.10-9
    GConf-1.0.9-9
    gnome-libs-1.4.2-9
    gdk-pixbuf-0.22.0-9
    libghttp-1.0.9-9
    libglade-0.17-9
    gnome-mime-data-1.0.4-9
    gnome-vfs-1.0.5-9
    libgtop-1.0.13-1  (upgraded!)
    gnome-print-0.37-9
    gal-0.23-9
   
    
Core Desktop Applications:    
    scrollkeeper-0.2 (not rebuilt)
    control-center-1.4.0.5-1  (control-center-single-0.3 also provided) (upgraded!)
    gnome-core-1.4.2-9
    sawfish-1.2-gtk1/librep-0.16.1/rep-gtk-0.15 (rep-gtk and sawfish not rebuilt)
    gnome-applets-1.4.1-1 (upgraded!)
    gnome-utils-1.4.1.2-1 (upgraded!)
    mc-4.5.55-9
    gnome-games-1.4.0.4 (upgraded!)
    gnome-pim-1.4.6 (not rebuilt - no need to)
    gtop-1.0.13-9
    gnome-user-docs-1.4.1   (not rebuilt - no need to)
    gnome-audio-1.4.0   (not rebuilt - no need to)
    startgnome-0.5.1-1   (new!)

Additional Libraries:
    bonobo-1.0.22-9
    gtkhtml-1.0.4-1
    gtkhtml-1.1.8-9 (bonobo enabled version)
        
Development Tools    
    xml-i18n-tools-0.9 (not rebuilt, no need to)
    intltool-0.22 (upgraded!)
    
Applications:
    dillo-0.7.1.2-1 (upgraded!)
    gnome-commander-0.9.12-1 (upgraded!)
    gnobog-0.4.3-4  
    eog-0.6     Eye of GNOME - image viewer( new!)
    GQview-1.2.2     (upgraded!)
    
        

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Read http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/install.html for detail info.

- OS
  Windows NT/2000/XP.

NOTE: Cygwin GNOME doesn't have good support for Win9x/ME yet!

- File System
  NTFS is recommended.
  And you should keep all mounts in binary mode.

- Cygwin
In general, as mentioned above, this release is built on Cygwin net release
20030308 snapshot, please consider upgrading your packages to the latest releases.

First, make sure you have these packages installed:
    cygwin      1.3.20
    libdb3.1    3.1.17
    libintl1/libintl2   0.10.40/0.11.5
    libiconv2/libcharset1       1.8
    libpopt0    1.6.4
    libbz2_1    1.0.2
    libncurses6 5.2-8
    jpeg        6b-7
    libpng12    1.2.5
    tiff        3.5.7
    libungif    4.1.0
    zlib        1.1.4
    XFree86-base   4.2.0
    
For package list needed to build GTK+/GNOME based applications, see section
NEW BASELINE above.

INSTALLATION

Please refer  http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/install.html for detail info.

Now we support installation directly via Cygwin setup. We've got the
setup.ini generator from Cygwin CVS, which would make the setup.ini much more reliable,
and saved us from the embarrassing situcation.

Launch Cygwin setup, choose Download from Internet, when it ask you to choose
a mirror site, add http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/install , then it will fetch
the setup.ini, you can find GNOME packages in GNOME-* sections.

All packages that belongs to category GNOME-libs should be installed.
And if you want a GNOME desktop, you need to install nearly all packages in
category GNOME-desktop (only gnome-audio and gnome-user-docs are optional).

To ensure the package dependencies, we recommend you to download these packages
first, and then to install them along with packages from Cygwin net release,
rather than to install directly from the Internet .

These packages are not yet uploaded to the Project File List arena,
so those friends who don't like the Cygwin installer are enforced to use it
to download the packages before installing them by hand.
[ Mar 25: You can check the Package List page. ]

A full installation need about 150M disk space.


RUN

Please refer  http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/run.html for detail info.

WindowMaker is deprecated now, as WindowMaker from the Cygwin net release
was found not be GNOME-compliant, and Sawfish is stable and fast enough now.

Package startgnome, written by Steven O'Brien is also provided,
just execute startgnome.bat in Windows console or startgnome in bash
to open the GNOME desktop. That's all.

We also provided a post-install script in package startgnome,
to add 'Cygwin GNOME' shortcuts on your desktop and Start Menu.
If you install it by Cygwin setup, just click the icon on your Windows desktop to start your GNOME journey!


TIPS

- If you strip all the .exes and .dlls to reduce their size, then the system
now feels quite fast in use (I run a 800MHz Pentium 3 laptop with 256Mb memory).
Startup and shutdown still take around 20-25 seconds each though.
                                             -- Steven O'Brien

- Run-time loaded dlls (which are used extensively by Gnome) may cause the
cygwin fork() call to fail. This is because the child process must load the dll
to exactly the same address as the parent process loaded it, and this is not
always possible. The only solution available currently is to rebase your DLLS,
using the rebase package that is now part of the official cygwin distribution.
The "rebaseall" tool will only rebase dlls installed with cygwin setup,
so you will have to select the dlls manually. The command sequence I use is:   
    $ find /usr/bin /usr/lib /usr/X11R6/bin /opt/gnome/bin /opt/gnome/lib \
      -name "*.dll" -print | sed -e '/cygwin1.dll$/ d' > /tmp/dll.lst    
    $ rebase -v -d -b 0x70000000 -o 0x10000 -T /tmp/dll.lst   
    $ rm /tmp/dll.lst

                                                 -- Steven O'Brien

- Control-center-single is really worthy of installing.

- Useful argument for the Cygwin XFree86 X server
  -fullscreen   In full screen mode, no title bar.
  -clipboard    Transfer data between X clipboard and Windows clipboard
  -multiwindow  Use Windows as window manager(so don't use it with startgnome!),
                each X root window is created as a Windows window
  (You can pass them to the startgnome shell script, but not startgnome.bat
        $ startgnome -- -fullscreen -clipboard
  )

- Dillo is a tiny web browser, but works very well. You may like to
set it as your default http:// url handler
(in Control Center -> Document Handlers -> URL Handlers)

- Gnobog, a bookmark manager now supports dillo and Windows URL handler.


Other Resources

Known Issues

Have Problem?

Mailing List:   mailto:cygnome-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Online Forum:   http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=67909



Hansom Young <glyoung@users.sourceforge.net >

 
    


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