LXDE:PCManFM build and setup guide
Since 2010, PCManFM has undergone a complete rewrite from scratch. So the new PCManFM is totally different from the old (legacy) 0.5.x series. Build instructions, the ways to setup and configuration files are different too. Here are complete build instructions and a setup guide.
Packages on different distros have a totally different naming, so only the generic names are listed here. Regarding to how those packages are named in your distro, it's distro-dependent and please refer to your own distros.
Contents |
Build Prerequisite
Build time Dependencies
- GTK+ 2 >= version 2.18
- Glib >= version 2.22
- Cairo >= version 1.8
- menu-cache >= version 0.3.2 (This is a small lib from LXDE project. Used for application menu integration)
- Libtool
- Pkg-config
Note: Libfm version 1.0 have a bit higher requirements. That will be fixed in version 1.0.1.
Additional Dependencies
If you're building source code from git repository rather than released tarballs, you'll need these:
- automake >= 1.11
- autoconf >= 2.63
- intltool >= 0.40
- gettext
Get the Source Code
Released tarballs
- menu-cache: http://sf.net/projects/lxde/
- libfm and pcmanfm: http://sf.net/projects/pcmanfm
Tarballs are not current - for current build install from GIT
The latest source code in development from git
- menu-cache: git://lxde.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/lxde/menu-cache
- libfm: git://pcmanfm.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/pcmanfm/libfm
- pcmanfm: git://pcmanfm.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/pcmanfm/pcmanfm
To get source code from git repository, use this command (If this gives you an error (timeout) just keep trying and it will work):
cd /usr/src git clone <repository URL>
Subversion repositories
Since 2010, we switched to git. Old source code in svn repos was still kept, but things in svn repos are no longer maintained and are out of date. Please avoid using them.
Compile the Source Code
| Note: If you have any of mentioned components already installed in your system, either manually or by your distribution's package manager, then doing this will overwrite your existing files! |
After installing the prerequisites, compiling should be smooth.
Additional step for git
configure script is only provided in tarballs. For source code downloaded from git repo, you need to generated them manually with autogen.sh after installing dependencies (also see below).
cd /usr/src/menu-cache ./autogen.sh
Do the same for each component. If you get errors then you haven't installed all dependencies correctly
Compile and Install - Linux Ubuntu or Debian
Install all required dependencies:
sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev autoconf automake autotools-dev intltool libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libmenu-cache1-dev libtool pkg-config
If you're compiling version 1.0 from git sources then you should have package valac at least version 0.13.0 installed too. (note: version of 1.0.1 contains a bug that requires valac even on compilation from tarball)
Libfm newer than 1.0 can be compiled even if such package isn't available with cost of disabling custom actions support. Check if you have valac at least 0.13.0 installed. Run:
dpkg -l valac
and look into output if it contains line like this:
ii valac 0.14.0-0ubuntu1 C# like language for the GObject system
The text 0.14.0-0ubuntu1 in example above is a version of valac package.
Compile and install components:
- libfm:
- if you have valac >= 0.13 available
cd /usr/src/libfm ./configure --prefix=/usr && make DEB_MULTIARCH=`dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH 2>/dev/null` && rm -f /usr/lib/$DEB_MULTIARCH/libfm-* sudo make install-strip
-
- without valac
cd /usr/src/libfm ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-actions && make DEB_MULTIARCH=`dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH 2>/dev/null` && rm -f /usr/lib/$DEB_MULTIARCH/libfm-* sudo make install-strip
- pcmanfm:
cd /usr/src/pcmanfm ./configure --prefix=/usr && make sudo make install-strip
Compile and Install - FEDORA
TESTED ON FEDORA 14 ONLY
Install all required dependencies:
su - yum install make automake autoconf gcc gtk2 glib2 menu-cache libtool pkgconfig intltool
- menu-cache:
cd /usr/src/menu-cache ./configure --prefix=/usr && make make install-strip
- libfm
cd /usr/src/libfm ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr && make make install-strip
- pcmanfm
cd /usr/src/pcmanfm ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig/ && make make install-strip
NOTE: For 64bit users you may need to also run this:
ln -s /usr/lib/libfm-gtk.so.0.0.0 /usr/lib64/libfm-gtk.so.0 ln -s /usr/lib/libfm.so.0.0.0 /usr/lib64/libfm.so.0
Compile and Install - Other
By default, programs will be installed to /usr/local. If you want to change the location, for example /usr, pass --prefix=<the dir you want> to "configure".
- menu-cache:
./configure && make sudo make install-strip
- libfm
./configure --sysconfdir=/etc && make sudo make install-strip
- pcmanfm
./configure && make sudo make install-strip
Please note that --sysconfdir=/etc is needed if you want to install config files under /etc. Otherwise default config files will be installed to /usr/local/etc.
Setup Runtime Environment Correctly
Runtime Dependencies
- GTK+ >= version 2.18
- Glib >= version 2.22
- menu-cache >= version 0.3.2
- lxmenu-data (data files for application menu integration)
- gamin or other FAM backend (not required for Glib 2.27.1 or newer)
- gvfs and its dependencies (optional, but highly recommended):
- dbus and dbus-glib (required by gvfs)
- policykit-gnome (required for authentication for volume management)
- Other dependencies of gvfs are all optional. That depends what configure options are turned on when compiling gvfs. If packager of your distro includes all options and didn't try to split the packages (Ubuntu, for example), you'll get a lot of dependencies. However those dependencies are not mandatory. If you carefully choose configure options or splitting the package in a more sensible way, those dependencies are all optional and can be make minimal. Bug report to your distro if you find there are a lot of unwanted dependencies caused by gvfs since they should have been optional.
Other requirements
If you want to make use of gvfs support, here are some requirements.
- Dbus should be launched correctly
- If you're using Gnome, XFCE, or LXDE, you don't need to touch this.
- Try 'env | grep DBUS', if you see nothing from the output, your dbus is not running and you need to launch it.
- man dbus-launch to see how to use it. The most easy way is adding this to your .xinitrc or whatever startup script your WM uses.
## test for an existing bus daemon, just to be safe
if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ; then
## if not found, launch a new one
eval 'dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session'
echo "D-Bus per-session daemon address is: $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"
fi
- Policykit authentication agent needs to be running (policykit-gnome)
- If you want to launch it in your startup script:
/usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1
- If you're using LXDE or something that supports freedesktop.org autostart spec:
mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart cp /etc/xdg/autostart/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop ~/.config/autostart
Then, edit ~/.config/autostart/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop and remove this line:
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;XFCE;
Actually this program is not Gnome only, but this line disable it deliberately in desktops other than Gnome or XFCE.
Without those two, gvfs won't work correctly.
To turn off GVFS support
- Remove gvfs (This should always work)
- Or, here is a more elegant way. This works even if you have gvfs installed
export GIO_USE_VFS="local" export GIO_USE_VOLUME_MONITOR="unix"
Using PCManFM with GLib older than 2.27.1
- New feature of Libfm to support custom actions in context file menu cannot work with GLib older than version 2.26 so to compile it you have to disable actions by supplying option --disable-actions for configure script.
- If you are using PCManFM with GLib older than 2.27.1 you may get bad effect: PCManFM does not update content of directory when you create file in it or delete file from it. That bug may happen if you installed GLib without modules so to fix it install all GLib modules, please.
Command line options
Usage:
pcmanfm [OPTION...] [FILE1, FILE2,...]
Help Options:
-h, --help Show help options --help-all Show all help options --help-gtk Show GTK+ Options
GTK+ Options
--class=CLASS Program class as used by the window manager --name=NAME Program name as used by the window manager --screen=SCREEN X screen to use --sync Make X calls synchronous --gtk-module=MODULES Load additional GTK+ modules --g-fatal-warnings Make all warnings fatal
Application Options:
-p, --profile=PROFILE Name of configuration profile -d, --daemon-mode Run PCManFM as a daemon --no-desktop No function. Just to be compatible with nautilus --desktop Launch desktop manager --desktop-off Turn off desktop manager if it's running --desktop-pref Open desktop preference dialog -w, --set-wallpaper=FILE Set desktop wallpaper from image FILE --wallpaper-mode=MODE Set mode of desktop wallpaper. MODE=(color|stretch|fit|center|tile) --show-pref=N Open Preferences dialog on the page N -n, --new-win Open new window --role=ROLE Window role for usage by window manager --display=DISPLAY X display to use
Bug Reporting and How to Help Debug PCManFM
We really need your help to make it better. If you find crashes, here are the instructions how you can help us track it down.
Notice:
- Turning on debugging options with --enable-debug will make pcmanfm slightly slower, but this helps debugging a lot. For production use, don't turn this on.
Steps to help debug pcmanfm:
- Install gdb
- Compile libfm and pcmanfm with debugging support (this is just an example, refer to instructions for your distribution above):
./configure --enable-debug --sysconfdir=/etc make clean install (install-strip will strip debug-info which we need)
- Kill all running instance of pcmanfm
killall pcmanfm
- Export some glib environment variables to help debugging. These environment variable turn on additional debugging facilities built-into glib and can greatly help debugging sometimes.
export G_DEBUG=fatal-criticals export G_SLICE=debug-blocks export G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all
- Run pcmanfm with gdb
gdb pcmanfm
- Then, in gdb, type 'run' (you can add usual command-line arguments such as --desktop to 'run')
(gdb) run
- When you get a crash, type 'bt' in gdb to get backtrace.
(gdb) bt
- Send the backtrace along with your bug report to us. Nice backtrace can greatly help us track down the bugs. Without gdb backtrace, a bug report reads 'pcmanfm crashes sometimes.' only doesn't help at all and will be ignored by us since it contains no useful information.
- What a good useful bug report should contains
- Your distro
- How to reproduce the bug
- The gdb backtrace
- Send the bug report to bug tracker rather then mail it to the authors directly.
Priority of bug reports
Since it's not possible to fix all of the bugs at the same time, the bug reports have to be prioritized. Here are the rules used to prioritize them:
- Priorities 1 to 3 - minor bugs (on optional actions or features):
1 - badly documented; 2 - lesser feature not always works; 3 - some additional functionality required.
- Priorities 4 to 6 - major bugs (on main actions such as windows, drag&drop, etc.):
4 - action sometimes does not work; 5 - action works not way it intended to; 6 - action does not work at all or breaks something else;
- Priorities 7 to 9 - critical bugs:
7 - crash in some conditions; 8 - frequent crash, hangup, program fails to start in some conditions; 9 - program fails, hangs or crashes on start.
Additional Info for Packagers
You can customize the default configuration of libfm and pcmanfm. The default config files are installed to /etc/xdg/libfm and /etc/xdg/pcmanfm. Do your customization to /etc/xdg/libfm/libfm.conf and /etc/xdg/pcmanfm/pcmanfm.conf. If you don't know what options are supported, use ~/.config/pcmanfm/pcmanfm.conf as a template. Besides, pcmanfm supports using different profile. pcmanfm --profile=lxde for example let you use lxde.conf instead of pcmanfm.conf. So, you can do pcmanfm --profile <your_custom_config_file> in your startup script and then there is no need to patch the package itself.
