See here for information about the new GNOME 3.12-compatible packages: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1404683

I'm now on IRC! Come join us at #unityforarch on Freenode

To install Unity from my repos:

See the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/un … mmended.29

To install Unity from source:

See the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/unity#From_source

-- You probably don't want to read anything below --

The story

So...rather than wasting internet bandwith to download a new Ubuntu ISO to test out the new Unity features, I decided to try to make it work under Arch Linux. It took a whole lot longer than I expected to get it even partially working. So, here's my story:

Knowing that Unity isn't in the main repositories, I went the AUR's website and looked for a user created Unity package. That didn't go too well. The Unity package hasn't been updated for 6 months. D'oh! I decided to download the existing PKGBUILD and modify it to work with the Unity 4.xx series. After changing the version number, I tried to "makepkg" it, and was greeted with a message about installing Compiz 0.9.x. I thought it would be an easy install. It was quite the opposite. Compiz's install prefix was set to /opt/unity, but FindCompiz cmake build file expected Compiz to be in /usr, so none of the Compiz packages, except for compiz-core would compile. Then, I tried reinstalling compiz-core, but this time, changing the prefix to /usr. The compiled package ended up being only a few kilobytes big. I guess the mouse wheel was invented for a reason. I looked at the PKGBUILD again, only to find that there was a line at the very bottom that ran "rm -rf ${pkgdir}/usr". That explains a lot! I ended up adopting all the compiz*-git packages and fixing them so they would compile and install.

So, now that Compiz is working (restarted and tested just to make sure I didn't waste my time with something that didn't work), I went on to install the rest of the dependencies listed in the Unity PKGBUILD file. That went relatively well. I was so happy after seeing the progress counter go up after running "makepkg", but at about 8%, gcc spat out an error about an undeclared function (sorry, I forgot what the function was). Natually, I went to Google and searched the name of the function. 0 results! Exactly was I was looking for! I ended up downloading the Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 ISO and running "find -type f /usr/lib | xargs objdump -T | grep the_function". The problem lied in the libindicator package. There was a newer version available which contained that function. I have no idea why a package that's only 0.02 versions ahead of the AUR package would contain new functions...

Next! Utouch...ugh...great memories! Not! I was so glad that I had fixed the utouch packages earlier (for touchegg to work). I was too frustrated from compiz and libindicator to try to compile more stuff.

Cmake. Whoever created the CMakeLists.txt file didn't list all the dependencies required. So after running "makepkg" 10 billion times, waiting for "somebodydidntputthisincmake.h not found" errors to appear, I finally got all the dependencies I needed installed...or so I thought. After installing and compiling all these dependencies, the cmake only continues 3% further before encountering another cryptic gcc error. This time, there no error about a file not being found. So not knowing what dependency was missing, I headed over to http://packages.ubuntu.com and downloaded the Unity DEB source to find the dependencies in then debian/control file. After install those few dependencies that I missed, I ran "makepkg" again, hoping that it would finally compile successfully. CMake went a little further--5% further to be exact--before running into another error. It complained about DndSourceDragBegin() having two return types. Sure, enough "./plugins/unityshell/src/ResultViewGrid.h" had the return type as boolean and "/usr/include/Nux-1.0/Nux/InputArea.h" had the return type as void. WTF? How the heck does this even compile under 11.10???

After changing void to bool in "/usr/include/Nux-1.0/Nux/InputArea.h", I ran "makepkg" once again anxiously waiting to the see the line "Finished making: unity 4.10.2". CMake compiled about 35% before running into error about an undeclared gtk function. Nooooooooooooo!!! I wasn't brave enough to install the git version of gtk3, so I created a chroot, installed the base packages, and installed all of those dependencies fairly quickly (it gets a lot easier after doing it so many times).

Moving on to gtk3. After cloning the ~200MB git repository, autotools spits out an error about cairo-gl missing. So, I proceeded to install the cairo-gl-git package, which failed to compile (it compiled successfully outside of the chroot...). GREAT. So, Unity fails to compile because GTK version is too old, and GTK failed to compile because cairo-gl is missing, and cairo-gl fails to compile because I'm in a chroot. GAHHH!!! While thinking about throwing the computer out of the window, I searched the AUR for other GTK3 packages. I just happened to find a package named "GTK3-UBUNTU"! That package was still at version 3.0, but it was pretty easy to get the patches and source code for 3.1 from the Ubuntu GTK source package.

So, FINALLY, Unity compiles. I was so darn happy, I didn't even care if it ran or not. I logged out and logged back into the GNOME 3 fallback mode, and entered the chroot. After running "xhost +SI:localuser:chenxiaolong" to run X11 apps in the chroot, I crossed my fingers and ran "DISPLAY=:0.0 unity --replace". It failed with python 3 complaining about missing modules. That's okay, since the Unity launch script is written in python 2. I changed the shebang line in "/usr/bin/unity" to point to python 2 and ran "DISPLAY=:0.0 unity --replace". It didn't necessarily fail, but it didn't succeed either. It didn't print out any error messages. Weird... I thought I'd try enabling Unity from the compiz settings manager then. I ran "DISPLAY=:0.0 compiz --replace" and "DISPLAY=:0.0 ccsm" and enabled the Unity plugin. Unity runs! Although nothing shows on the screen, it runs! It shows up in the process list! Woohoo!

And that's about how far I got. There were quite a few Vala errors during the compiling process (I forgot which package it was), which is probably why Unity won't appear. I'll try again later with the vala-devel or vala-git package and hopefully Unity will work then. Here are screenshots of what I've gotten working so far:

http://i.imgur.com/7F1fm.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/zGNJc.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3mCgd.jpg

By then way, I love the simplicity of pacman and the AUR. I can't imagine how long this would have taken with other package managers.

Moderator edit: Do not place large images in line. If you want, you may embed links to thumbnails inside url tags.

Last edited by chenxiaolong (2014-04-15 17:11:04)