Andy Chase

This probably doesn't apply to a lot of people installing the ROX-Filer environment on top of a standard Linux distribution, since a lot of distros install GNOME even if you specify KDE as your preferred desktop environment.. depending on how lazy you are during the installation.



But if you're trying to get the ROX environment set up on a Linux From Scratch distribution like I am, do yourself a favor and install GNOME before you start messing with ROX-filer.



The ROX base and ROX-Filer programs will install and run with only Glib, GTK+, and the Gdk-pixbuf libraries installed, but last night I tried to install the ROX 'Archive' utility, and it led me down a path of dependency after dependency; first and foremost, it needs Python, so I installed Python. It also needs an image library called ImLib, so hunted that down and installed it too.



The real problems began when it demanded the PyGTK bindings... when I went to compile PyGTK I discovered I needed gnome-libs, which in turn requires pretty much all of the other gnome components to compile correctly.



And also make sure you have version 3.x of BerkeleyDB, compiled with the version 1.85 API enabled. (run ./configure --help before building db; the appropriate option is there somewhere.) 4.x doesn't cut it, either - make sure you have 3.x.



I'd had enough of the mess by the time Good Eats came on, so I never did get gnome-libs and pygtk to compile correctly last night. I'll probably do everything over in reverse order, building a skeletal GNOME system from the ground up and then compiling pygtk against it... and THEN, hopefully, I'll be able to run the ROX Archive tool and the other apps.



What a pain, eh? But it will be good to have GNOME installed even if I never use it; I'll be able to install and run pretty much any GNOME-dependent program I please.