En/Trinity desktop environment 14.1.2

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TDE 14.1.2 and Slackware 15.0

The 28th April 2024 marks the release of Trinity Desktop Environment 14.1.2: a desktop environment for Linux and other UNIX flavors. This is the third release in the TDE 14.1.x branch, consisting in a maintenance release that fixes all bugs and issues reported by users since the previous 14.1.1 one. No new major features were introduced, just some minor updates meant to enhance user experience. The TQt3 and tqtinterface code cleanup effort is still going on but, unluckily, produced no evident improvement so far.

As usual I managed to update the SlackBuild build scripts for Slackware Linux then managed to build, install and test packages for the graphic environment, that is my usual choice for every virtual machine needing a GUI I deploy. Thanks to the few changes introduced, the scripts required little if no update. Following is a list of differences introduced between releases 14.1.1 and 14.1.2. For the impatient here is the link to the build scripts useful to build all of the packages on your Linux boxes.

Libksquirrel

One of the long term goals of the Trinity Desktop Environment project consists of migrating the build system to CMake. Pretty much all of the packages were gradually ported from AutoTools. Among the few notable exceptions was libksquirrel: an optional library that adds some image codecs into TDE. The build system was finally switched with TDE release 14.1.2 as such the build script required some tweaking to remove any reference to AutoTools and to set the build options as in the following code snippet: 

   # Add some include paths to the standard compiler flags otherwise the build
   # process will fail with an error
   SLKCFLAGS="${SLKCFLAGS} -L ${QTDIR}/lib${LIBDIRSUFFIX}"
   
   cmake ${TMP}/tmp-${PRGNAM}/${DIR_SRC} \
      -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING="${SLKCFLAGS}" \
      -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING="${SLKCFLAGS} ${DEBUG_CMAKE_OPT}" \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${PREFIX} \
      -DTQTDIR=${QTDIR} \
      -DBUILD_DXF="OFF" \
      -DBUILD_DICOM="OFF" \
      -DBUILD_FIG="OFF" \
      2>&1 | tee -a ${OUTPUT}/${PRGNAM}_configure.log

The last three options are required to avoid the script from failing raising an error lamenting missing libraries. Those libraries are not included in Slackware 15.0 official package list.

All of the tweaks and updates are included in the previously linked build script.

Building Packages

In order to build TDE successfully, please remove any installed TDE package from your Linux box, logout then login again in order to reset the environment variables, removing unwanted TDE options. Before you start I'll strongly suggest to:

  • Back-up all of your data, the configuration directory ˜/.trinity and the configuration file ''˜/.tderc in your home directory. I never experienced any data loss or other issue updating, but you definitely want to have a fail-safe in case any of that should happen.
  • Removing TDE packages means no graphical interface will be available for the time needed to build the new release. The required time interval depends on your machine. You are suggested to switch to runlevel 3 (Command Line Interface) for the duration of the procedure:
   init 3
  • Remove all previously installed TDE packages. To remove release 14.1.1, for example, execute command:
   removepkg /var/log/packages/*trinity-14.1.1*
  • Delete configuration scripts left over by the removepkg command.
   rm /etc/profile.d/tqt3.*
   rm /etc/profile.d/trinity.*
  • Logout, then login again to ensure that all references pointing to TDE are removed from the environment configuration.
  • Install or update some packages required by TDE. Optional packages include:
  • Heimdall;
  • Imlib;
  • Compilers and other tools used too build software;
  • Programming languages to bind to TDE (Optional);

If you don't install the prerequisites, some functionality could go missing for the resulting packages.

Ready the Build Tree

The Trinity Desktop Environment includes a lot of packages, which require building and installing in the right order. Download the source code, available as a big tar archive, decompress it and move the resulting compressed archive files in the proper directory.

  • Download and decompress the build tree archive in a local directory. Both /tmp and /usr/src/tde-14.1.2 are valid candidates.
  • Download and decompress the tar archive containing the source code for all of the packages.
  • Move the compressed source code archives in the target directories. Every archive with tar.xz extension to the directory bearing the same name.
  • Set the build options required by your CPU. For a computer with a 64 bit Amd CPU inside, for example, use the following command:
   rm TDE.options
   ln -s TDE.options.x86_64 TDE.options
  • Move to the directory where script TDE.SlackBuild is located.
   cd ./tde_build_script/bin
  • If you wish to build all of the localization packages together with the base ones, update the main build script tde_build_script/bin/TDE.SlackBuild turning lines
      # Build package
   #   bash ./${PKG}.SlackBuild

into 

      # Build package
      bash ./${PKG}.SlackBuild
  • Run the main script and wait patiently for its conclusion:
   sh ./TDE.SlackBuild

The script will build each and every package in the base, library and prerequisite group then install and configure them. A full installation will require several hours. When the script will finish, TDE will be installed and ready for use. The script will stop before its programmed conclusion only when encountering issues such as a missing dependency package or build tool or similar.

  • Check the Trinity Desktop Environment installation running the startx command to load the graphical interface.
  • Last, whoever usually starts its Linux box in GUI mode should close the TDE session and revert the runlevel to 4:
   init 4

The Updated Build Tree

The updated build tree can be downloaded from the following link: tde_build_tree_sg-14.1.2.tar.xz. The tar archive includes every and each SlackBuild script, patch and configuration file.


CONCLUSIONS

This web page includes a summary of the changes introduced in release 14.1.2 of TDE and the updates required by the build scripts for Slackware Linux. Brief instructions to successfully use the scripts were provided along with some example commands. All the of the build, installation, configuration and subsequent use tests were conducted on 64 and 32 bits AMD CPUs running an up to date version of Slackware Linux 15.0. In conclusion, the deserved praises to all of the TDE developers for their commitment and efforts are renewed. Until the next official release for the usual update.


For any feedback, questions, errors and such, please e-mail me at studiosg [at] giustetti [dot] net


External links


Languages: English - Italiano

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