Frequently Asked Questions

General JHBuild Questions

Q: 

The wget command can't download any tarballs. How do I get it to work with my firewall?

A: 

This can be fixed by creating or editing a ~/.wgetrc file. If you need to go through an HTTP proxy to access FTP sites, add a line like the following to the file:

ftp_proxy = http://hostname:port/

If you just need to use passive FTP connections (sometimes needed with NAT firewalls), add the following line:

passive_ftp = on

This will fix all uses of the wget command.

Q: 

Building stuff is slow. Is there any way I can speed it up?

A: 

Other than buying a faster CPU, hard disk or getting more memory, you might want to install CCache, which can cache compilation results for you. It is available with most distributions.

After installing CCache, set the cache size with the following command:

ccache -M 2G

(replace 2G with the size you want for your cache). Then create symlinks to CCache for your compiler in ~/bin:

cd ~/bin
for cmd in cc gcc c++ g++; do
  ln -s /usr/bin/ccache $cmd
done

You can check the status of your cache (such as cache hit rates) with the following command:

ccache -s
Q: 

Is there a better way to monitor the status of the build than looking at terminal window?

A: 

If you have Zenity >= 2.9 installed on your system, JHBuild will display an icon in the system tray. The icon will display the current build stage, and the tooltip will show the last message from JHBuild.

The icon will also pop up a balloon on error.

Building GNOME

Q: 

What other prerequisites are needed to build GNOME with JHBuild?

A: 

Some of the packages you will need on your system include:

  • DocBook XML DTD and XSLT stylesheets. These need to be registered in the XML catalog (/etc/xml/catalog).

  • X libraries

  • fam or gamin (used by gnome-vfs for file monitoring).

  • libsmbclient from Samba (used for browsing Windows networks).

  • libbz2 from bzip2.

  • libpng, libjpeg and libtiff (used for image loading).

If you are installing distro packages, you may need to install corresponding "dev" or "devel" packages. Note that this list is just a starting point - not a comprehensive list.

Q: 

I've built GNOME with JHBuild. How do I run it?

A: 

You will want to create a ~/.xsession file, which is run by the display manager when you log in. This file should look something like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec jhbuild run gnome-session

Finally, you should make sure that the ~/.xsession file is executable.

Q: 

I built GNOME using JHBuild with prefix set to /usr, and now my system is broken. What should I do?

A: 

Don't set prefix to /usr.

Q: 

How do I get gnome-volume-manager to work when running in a prefix?

A: 

The gnome-volume-manager program reacts to messages from hald over the system message bus, which must be running as root. Assuming that your distribution comes with HAL, the main problem is getting gnome-volume-manager to talk to the system message bus.

Since communication is done over a UNIX domain socket, the easiest way to do this is to create a symlink from /var/run/dbus to $prefix/var/run/dbus:

mkdir -p $prefix/var/run
cd $prefix/var/run
ln -s /var/run/dbus dbus

You may also have trouble building HAL with JHBuild, since it tries to install some things outside of its build root. Running make -k install in the hal directory might help here.

Module Set File Syntax