Plank

Insufficient instructions for compiling from source; also, PPAs are not longer current

Asked by ALinuxUser

It seems to be that the advertised Ubuntu (/Mint etc.) PPAs do not contain the 0.11.3 code.

Also, fuller instructions for installing that code - installing from source - might be useful. I had to do the following (some of which is specific to Linux Mint).

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Download the source code from: https://launchpad.net/plank (see right hand side of the page).

Unpack somewhere (e.g. the desktop).

Install packages you need to compile Plank. On my system (which had some compilation stuff installed already) I needed to do:

sudo apt-get install libbamf3-dev gir1.2-gee-0.8 libwnck-3-dev libgee-0.8-dev

Open a terminal in the folder you unpacked the code into (or open terminal and use the 'cd' command to get to the folder you've unpacked the code into).

Do:
./configure && make && make install

Run plank by searching for plank in the MintMenu, or ALT-F2 and enter 'plank'.

To make plank start on boot: System Settings -> Startup Applications and add a entry. It might be best to make use of the delay field to add a delay of a few (3?) seconds.

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Revision history for this message
Peter Feichtinger (shippo) said : 		#1

There are pretty detailed instructions in the source directory in a file called HACKING.

The only thing I can see missing are prerequisites, which would indeed be nice to have.

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Peter Feichtinger (shippo) said : 		#2

Come to think of it, ./configure (or ./autogen.sh for that matter) will probably tell you about missing libraries, no?

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ALinuxUser (buntulongername-new) said : 		#3

I think that `./configure` did tell me about the missing libraries. Some prior warning would have been nice. (Something like: 'You may have to install additional packages in order for the `./configure` to work.')

The 'hacking' file did prove useful, once I found it and stopped looking for a file called 'readme' or 'install'. (Or, if files with those names were there - I don't recall - they were not useful.)

In sum, I think a little more documentation of an easily-findable sort wouldn't go amiss.

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Sadi Yumuşak (sa-yu) said : 		#4

Are there any changes between 0.11.1 and 0.11.3 that would make this path worth taking?

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Sadi Yumuşak (sa-yu) said : 		#5

And here is an easier path for installing the "less stable" development version, e.g. 0.11.3:
https://launchpad.net/~ricotz/+archive/ubuntu/docky

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Rico Tzschichholz (ricotz) said : 		#6

I will try to get it updated soon.

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Ben Reaves (rbreaves) said (last edit ): 		#7

On Ubuntu Budgie I had to install these dependencies to even run ./autogen.sh successfully.

sudo apt install autopoint valac libgnome-menu-3-dev libxml2-utils build-essential libgtk-3-dev libgee-0.8-2 libgee-0.8-dev libbamf3-dev libwnck-3-dev

Removing my original comment - it was based on a patch that created most - if not all of the problems I was having.

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Ben Reaves (rbreaves) said : 		#8