Cygwin Gnome

Patches to make DLL builds of the Gnome 1.4 libraries and desktop on Cygwin

Last updated: 4 March 2003    See here for the latest News

It is advisable to re-visit this page when building gnome on cygwin, or before reporting any problems, to make sure you have the latest patches and hints.
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Introduction

This site is the result of a project to get the Gnome 1.4 desktop working on Windows, using Cygwin as a porting tool and user environment. This project is now finished, I am unlikely to do much more work on it; and although the port is far from complete the following components are working/workable with NT/2K/XP on NTFS:

• sawfish window manager
• session manager
• panel (with a good selection of applets)
• control center
• gnome-terminal
• file manager (gnome midnight commander)
• help browser
• many of the utilities
• games (well, most of them anyway)

In addition, some applications have been compiled successfully with these libraries and are running on this desktop, including dillo, ee, ggv, ghex, gnome-pim, gnotepad+, gnumeric, sylpheed, and xchat. Note that these applications have not been updated or tested for some time, and may not all work with the latest cygwin gnome packages

Although performance will never approach linux, or even an apology for linux, it is still quite useable. That said, this is still beta quality with many rough edges. Volunteers to move this work forward are very welcome.

Lack of webspace, bandwidth, and resources mean that I can only publish source-code patches, not binaries. Therefore you will have to obtain the original sources and compile them yourself. Gnome is a very large package, and so this is only really suitable for people with experience with cygwin, cygwin-xfree86, and gnome.

Original Sources

Gnome:	http://www.gnome.org/
Cygwin:	http://www.cygwin.com/
Gmp:	http://www.swox.com/gmp/
Sawfish (and librep/rep-gtk):	http://sawmill.sourceforge.net/

Other Cygwin Gnome Sites

Usage

This work was done on Windows 2000, but the patched sources should also build OK on NT and XP. The build has not yet been tested on Windows 9x/Me. The system builds and runs very well on my Windows 2000/NTFS laptop.

The patches do not attempt to deal with the text file/binary file issue. I keep all my gnome data files in unix format (\n line-endings) and all my mounts are in binary mode. Volunteers to extend this work in that direction are very welcome.

You will first need to install cygwin, including the cygwin-xfree86 packages. See the links at the top of this page for instructions and download information. Use a current release of Cygwin: I last did a build with version 1.3.20-1 of cygwin1.dll, with the full set of cygwin packages as updated on 1 March 2003. Note that gnome definitely does not work with cygwin release 1.3.13 to 1.3.15 inclusive, as these releases all have a fatal bug in their implementation of poll().

Download the Gnome sources from your favourite gnome mirror. You will generally find the sources in the "GNOME/sources" directory of the mirror. Make sure you get the correct version to match the patch. (Note that the 1.4 release of gnome is no longer the latest).

For most packages, the default configure is sufficient. See the "Notes" column in the following Patches table for exceptions to this. I recommend that the Gnome packages are installed into a Gnome-specific root, such as /opt/gnome, rather than the default /usr/local, in order to simplify maintenance (as a last resort when you are having problems, at least then you have the option of rm -rf). Make sure that the "bin" directory of the install root of each package is in your PATH before you configure each package; also you need to have /usr/X11R6/bin in your PATH.

I have put together a single download file that contains all the patches and the script that I use to automate the build. I strongly recommend that you use this automated build, and accept all its default configuration, for your first attempt; this will give you the best chance of success-first-time.

Disclaimers

1. These patches are supplied completely without warranty or any implied fitness for purpose. They may or may not damage your system or your life beyond repair. Download them or use them entirely at your own risk.
2. I am not able to offer any support for these patches, Gnome, Cygwin, or anything else mentioned here or elsewhere. Please treat these patches as a work-in-progress (see Disclaimer number 1) and view them as a starting point, not a finished article. If your system is identical to mine, then Gnome will build exactly as it did for me. If your system is in any way different to mine (and it certainly will be) then expect to do some problem-solving of your own.
3. The functionality provided by building gnome with these patches is far from complete. But its a start, so I think its worth publishing.

Notes

• rebasing
  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.exe, so you will have to select the dlls manually. The command sequence I use is:
  

ben@thebeach ~/gnome
$ 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

ben@thebeach ~/gnome
$ rebase -v -d -b 0x70000000 -o 0x10000 -T /tmp/dll.lst

ben@thebeach ~/gnome
$ rm /tmp/dll.lst

• libtool
  Most of this work was done before the autotools (autoconf, automake, libtool, and the rest) were included in the cygwin distribution. The technique used here to generate dlls is outdated and deprecated for official cygwin packages. Therefore you should not take these patches as models for your own ports. Instead, you should consult the cygwin website and mailing list archives for information on how to use the latest autotools in cygwin. Try a google search for "relibtoolize site:cygwin.com", for example.

• integration with original gnome sources
  The patches apply some changes to generated files, and generally do other silly things that mean they cannot be easily merged into the original product development projects. But, with the release of gnome 2.x, development work on gnome 1.4 is effectively finished; and although bug-fix patches may still be accepted, there is no point in doing the (large) amount of work necessary to get cygwin-specific modifications into the mainline gnome 1.4 CVS. If you have the necessary time, and enthusiasm to get cygwin-gnome fully integrated with the mainline gnome development, then you should concentrate on gnome 2.

The Patches

All the patches to build the basic gnome desktop are contained in the single .tar.bz2 file, together with a script to automate the configuration and build process:

See the README file within the archive for instructions.

Manual Builds

Alternatively, obtain individual patches from the following tables (use the right-mouse button and select "Save Target As").

Each package should be built and installed in the order given in these tables. The configure command given is the one that I use which "works for me" (tm). Try "CFLAGS=-g" for debugging; or use configure --help to find other options.

You should at least read the files INSTALL and README in each package for special instructions.

For example, here is the sequence of commands to build the first package, audiofile. Substitute the PATH, "/sources", "/patches", the CFLAGS and prefix values appropriately. (Ben is our puppy - he loves the beach).

1.	set up the PATH:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome $ PATH=/opt/gnome/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:$PATH
2.	unpack the source tarball:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome $ tar zxvf /sources/audiofile-0.2.3.tar.gz
3.	change directory to the unpacked sources:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome $ cd audiofile-0.2.3
4.	apply the patch:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome/audiofile-0.2.3 $ patch -p1 < /patches/audiofile-0.2.3-cygwin.patch
5.	configure:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome/audiofile-0.2.3 $ CFLAGS=-O2 ./configure --prefix=/opt/gnome
6.	make:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome/audiofile-0.2.3 $ make
7.	check:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome/audiofile-0.2.3 $ make check
8.	install:
	ben@thebeach ~/gnome/audiofile-0.2.3 $ make install

Hints for building Gnome

Whether you use the supplied autobuild script, or configure the packages manually, you should make sure that you do not have "." in your PATH. This is to ensure that the "make install" target uses /bin/install.exe, and not the file "INSTALL" in the top level directory of each package.

Automated build

• If you modify your system or the build environment in any way between invocations of the autobuild script then you should delete the file config.cache in the package's build tree first. If you do not do this then configure may not recognise your changes.
• Before you can build a package for a second time, you must delete its build tree - otherwise the patch may not apply cleanly. Just remove the appropriate subdirectory of build.
• If the build fails part way through, correct the problem, then delete the build tree of the failed package, then type
  ./autobuild --from <package-name>
• To rebuild a single package, provided all its dependencies have been built, delete its build tree then type
  ./autobuild --only <package-name>.
• Do not delete a build tree until you are ready to try another build, because the files config.log and config.status at the top level of the package build tree may give important clues as to the reason for the failure.

Manual build

• Each package should be installed before building the next, because of the dependencies between packages.
  Some packages may need to be installed before make check will succeed - in this case just reverse the order of steps 7 and 8.
• If you modify your system or build environment after running configure, then you should run make distclean before re-running configure and make. If you do not do this then your changes may not be recognised by configure and make.

Running Gnome

start up

startgnome is designed to be run from a cygwin command line: it uses xinit to start the X server and gnome-session in such a way that the X server automatically shuts down when you log out of the gnome-session. Simply typing startgnome is sufficent to start gnome; for users familiar with the usual startx program (or xinit) it is possible to pass arguments to startgnome in the same format as that program to change behaviour for just this one session (see man startx). Note that ~/.startgnomerc is the default client, not ~/.xinitrc.

startgnome.bat is designed to be invoked from a desktop shortcut. It is just a wrapper for startgnome in the same way that the cygwin cygwin.bat script is a wrapper for bash. I recommend that you copy it to the same directory as cygwin.bat (c:\cygwin). When using startgnome.bat directly, a Windows console is created that contains the output messages from gnome-session. If you prefer not to have this console, but instead send the messages to a log file, you can start use run.exe that is distributed with cygwin xfree86 as:

c:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin\run c:\cygwin\startgnome.bat /f

c:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin\run c:\cygwin\startgnome.bat /f /home/me/mylog

when startup fails

shutdown

Occasionally, some process will not be terminated. For example, esd often continues to run; or if you have a gnome-terminal active then bash may remain. The consequences of this depends on whether you use run.exe with startgnome.bat. If you do use run.exe, then the X window will disappear, and all will appear to have terminated. But ps -ef in a cygwin shell will show that some processes have remained. When you come to shutdown Windows, it will give warnings about cmd.exe not shutting down correctly. Just tell Windows to terminate them. If you do not use run.exe, then you will find that the DOS console window remains. You can close this window manually, and that will terminate the remaining processes from your gnome session.

Contact

Comments, fixes, offers to take on proper development and maintenance should be sent to Steven O'Brien (steven dot obrien2 at ntlworld dot com)
Please do not send or attach large log files, traces, or binaries. Remember these patches are completely unsupported, so do not expect detailed help (or even any help) building or running Gnome.

If anyone else also has, or is working on, a port of Gnome to Cygwin, then maybe we should compare notes.

If anyone knows of a real practical use for the Gnome desktop on Windows, then please share it with the rest of us. The libraries should help porting many apps of course; and I like Glines; but now that I can run the desktop, I have to ask myself - why?

Request for Volunteers

• starting on gnome 2
• replacing my libtool fixes with proper autotool support
• debugging the current packages
• building and maintaining binary distributions
• porting the missing libraries
• porting applications
• documenting hints and tips for an FAQ

Applications

Please see my applications page for details.