Installing Evolution from CVS

Gregory Michael Leblanc

GNOME
GDP

gleblanc@cu-portland.edu

I've created this in lieu of any up-to-date instructions in the Evolution CVS module. I have managed to get Evolution up and running on one of my machines, and I'll be documenting my attempt on a second machine here.


Table of Contents
1. My Platform
2. gnome-print
3. oaf
4. gconf
5. gnome-vfs
6. bonobo
7. libunicode
8. gal
9. gtkhtml
10. evolution

1. My Platform

My working version of Evolution runs on RedHat Linux 7.0. These build instructions are being created on a RedHat Linux 6.2 machine, with a few updates and modifications.

I've defined a few variables to make things easier. First, I've got
export
  CVS_GNOME=:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome
in my .bashrc. I've also created a directory evolution/ in which to store all of the modules required for Evolution. You cannot create this folder in ~/, since that's where Evolution would like to store it's information. I generally create a ~/projects/ to store things like this in. I'm also installing all of my GNOME CVS software into /opt/gnome_cvs. I simply created this directory before starting these instructions.

I've put these in the order which works for me, as that seemed to have been completely neglected in the README file in CVS.


2. gnome-print

First, ignore what the readme says here, the gnome-print from helix does NOT work. CVS does appear to work, at least for me. First, change to evolution/ and run cvs -z3 -d $CVS_GNOME get gnome-print so that you have a current version of the gnome-print source code.

Next, change into the evolution/gnome-print directory, and run ./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs. This will create all of the nifty things that need to get created so that you can compile the software.

Note: That's a technical explanation.

Next, run make, which will compile the source code into binaries.

Now, run su, input your root password, and run make install. This will actually place the binaries into their final locations. Next I generally edit /etc/ld.so.conf and add /opt/gnome_cvs/lib to the end of the file, so that it knows where to find everything. After I've saved /etc/ld.so.conf, I run /sbin/ldconfig to update, uhm, whatever it is that this command updates.

Note: You don't actually need to run ldconfig after you run make install as it get's run automatically, but I like to run it anyway. It's your call.


3. oaf

The latest stable version of this from CVS seems to work well with Evolution. Get it using cvs -z3 -d $CVS_GNOME co -r oaf-stable-0-6 oaf. After you've downloaded it, run

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/ --disable-more-warnings
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig

Note: If you install OAF to a different prefix than you've installed the rest of GNOME (as in, you're doing something similar to what I'm doing), then you need to run export ACLOCAL_FLAGS='-I /opt/gnome_cvs/share/aclocal' so that other packages will be able to find OAF. I've also added this command to my ~/.bashrc so that it's always set.


4. gconf

Just one thine to remember about gconf... It requires a specific version from cvs. You can get it via a command like cvs -z3 -d $CVS_GNOME get -r gconf-1-0 gconf. Then just do a:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig

This one has worked fine for me, as long as I remember to set ACLOCAL_FLAGS after I finish installing OAF.


5. gnome-vfs

gnome-vfs is another one that requires a special flag to allow it to compile properly.

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/ --disable-more-warnings
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig


6. bonobo

Bonobo has worked well for me with a simple:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig


7. libunicode

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig

has worked wonders for me with libunicode.

I couldn't make the RPM version of this work, so just grab it from CVS, like everything else.


8. gal

Gal is a very straightforward build, probably partly because of the newness of the library. Once again:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig


9. gtkhtml

gtkhtml is one of the larger packages, and has caused be a few problems before, but it seems to be a bit easier to compile lately.

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig


10. evolution

Now let's get started on Evolution itself. Assuming that you've gotten all of the other things up and running, then this should be a snap. Grab the source from cvs, run:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/gnome_cvs/
make
su
make install
/sbin/ldconfig

At this point, I usually log out (my system restarts X when I log out, you may want to restart X manually if yours does not), and then start Evolution. If this doesn't get you up and running, you can email the Evolution list at or try #evolution on irc.gnome.org