First step if you have a dual core computer, activate it in .jhbuildrd with the line:

os.environ['MAKE'] = 'make -j2'


I guess it should work if you just define the environment variable in the .bashrc.

The first problem comes when compiling the bootstrap because gmp reminds you that you are under a 64 bits architecture. Configure stops because it can’t find a suitable compiler. I guess this should be fixed in jhbuild or just in gmp configure.in file because it doesn’t recognize the architecture correctly. To bypass this problem it is needed to specify the architecture to the package or for the whole jhbuild system. I preferred to avoid this problem for all packages and just added it in .jhbuild as:

autogenargs='--build x86_64-linux-gnu'


Actually the first problem you find is that gettext and autoconf stop compiling because of a wrong dependency in make process that causes it to try to compile something that wasn’t compiled yet. It is annoying but to bypass it just carry on compiling.

Next problem came with guile. I say ‘came’ instead of ‘comes’ because when doing this again to test the steps problem had dissapeared. Maybe they fixed it, but it couldn’t find the gmp library that he had just compiled before. With external help we realized that and bypassed it specifying the place where libraries are:

module_autogenargs['guile'] = autogenargs + ' --libdir /yourgnomebuildinstallationdirectory/lib64'


Until this moment, we were only compiling the bootstrap. Then you can begin with epiphany with jhbuild build epiphany. Next problem comes with gnome-doc-utils:

I/O error : Attempt to load network entity http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl
warning: failed to load external entity "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl"
error
xsltParseStylesheetFile : cannot parse http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl
compilation error: file ./xml2po.1.xml line 17 element refentry
xsltParseStylesheetProcess : document is not a stylesheet


What was missing was the package docbook-xsl. Next problems come with cairo:

configure: error: flex is required to create the libIDL scanner
*** error during stage configure of libIDL: ########## Error running ./autogen.sh --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***
configure: error: yacc is not usable as yacc - consider using bison
*** error during stage configure of libIDL: ########## Error running ./autogen.sh --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***


Fixed if installing packages flex and bison. Other problem with cairo is libpng. You need to install libpng-dev package but this is not enough because jhbuild replaces PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable, which causes it not to find it. Just adding the a line solves the problem (and many others that may appear) because it will search in system’s pkg-config system. This a solution but also a drawback: if any package configuration is not well written, it could cause you to use the system configuration instead of the compiled with jhbuild, though this should be a very rare thing. Line is:

addpath('PKG_CONFIG_PATH', '/usr/lib/pkgconfig')


While compiling GTK, avahi,icon-naming-utils and startup-notification I got:

* configure: WARNING: *** TIFF loader will not be built (TIFF library not found) ***
configure: error:
*** Checks for TIFF loader failed. You can build without it by passing
*** --without-libtiff to configure but some programs using GTK+ may
*** not work properly
*** error during stage configure of gtk+: ########## Error running ./autogen.sh --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***
configure: error:
*** Checks for JPEG2000 loader failed. You can build without it by passing
*** --without-libjasper to configure
*** error during stage configure of gtk+: ########## Error running ./autogen.sh --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***
*** error during stage configure of avahi: ########## Error running ./configure --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --disable-qt3 --disable-qt4 --disable-mono --disable-monodoc --disable-manpages --disable-python --enable-compat-howl --enable-compat-libdns_sd --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***
checking for XML::Simple... configure: error: XML::Simple perl module is required for icon-naming-utils
*** error during stage configure of icon-naming-utils: ########## Error running ./configure --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***
configure: error: X11 development libraries/headers not found
*** error during stage configure of startup-notification: ########## Error running ./configure --prefix /home/calvaris/nocrypt/gnome/install --libdir '${exec_prefix}/lib64' --build x86_64-linux-gnu ***


You need these packages for that:

• libtiff4-dev
• libjasper-dev
• libgdbm-dev
• libxml-simple-perl
• libxt-dev

And then comes a very funny thing: gnome-desktop stops because it doesn’t find the foundation-members.list files. If taking a look at the autogen.sh (thanks, garnacho) you see the following:

if test "`which gvfs-copy`" != ""; then
gvfs-copy http://api.gnome.org/gnome-about/foundation-members gnome-about/foundation-members.list
else
touch gnome-about/foundation-members.list
fi


In this case problem is that it finds gvfs-copy (it had been compiled before), but it couldn’t copy the file and you don’t get it eventually. A bug exists already about that but it was close as invalid, so I have to open a new one to upload a little patch I created. To bypass the problem immediately, you only need to type:
touch gnome-about/foundation-members.list

After continuing you can stop it at epiphany’s beginning, because you neither compiled nor installed webkit yet. I’ll carry on explaining how to compile webkit and epiphany in the next post. Enough for today.

One of the most scaring things for me were the scratchbox because everybody was telling me that it couldn’t be installed under amd64 and I could get much problems because of that. Steps:

1. apt-get install ia32
2. dpkg -i --force-architecture scratchbox-*.deb

That’s it (uhuuu, I’m afraid of the 64 bits!).

This is going to be my first post at Igalia’s planet a I just wanted to talk about me and my company. First of all, my presentation. I am Xabier Rodríguez Calvar but everybody on computer’s world knows me as calvaris. I grew in Marín a village in Galiza. I studied ‘Computer Engineering’ in the ‘Universidade da Coruña’ where I met my girlfriend and some colleagues who founded Igalia, where I am currently working on GNOME Mobile technologies, specially Maemo and fighting with Epiphany and WebKit.

Why did I write my when talking about Igalia? Because it is my company. Actually it is not because I’m still a partner on trial but if everything goes as expected I shall become a partner in a couple of years. This is one of the things I love in this company. Others are good working environment, working with Free Software, specially with GNOME, company facilities and specially the feeling of working for my own company, where I have the right to say whatever I want and that my opinion is so important as all of them, because there is nobody over me. That’s all! Join Igalia!