SuSE 9.1: compiling probs using pkg-config
 

My system is SuSE 9.1 Professional version. I've compiled a number of programs from source rather than the rpms because they were newer; and it appears that while SuSE puts many important things like gdk, gtk, glib etc. into /opt/gnome, other compilation processes prefer /usr - which seems to be the location developers use as a default location. So some things have ended up in one tree, some in the other, and one time when I hald lots of trouble with pkg-config, pango, atk and various other things I did some serious symlinking etc to get something running (I think it was gimp 2.0), referencing things to and fro. Mostly that works.

But I have since found that I've got two versions of pkg-config, one in /usr, one in /opt/gnome, with a mutually exclusive list of pc files (with the exception of two different versions of glib, but according to $PKG_CONFIG_PATH the newer one should be found first). I'm not sure whether I can a) simply remove the older glib, and b) combine the pc files in one directory to get rid of one of the pkg-config versions.

My immediate problem is even worse: when configuring gDesklets for compiling, lots of libraries were said to be missing, and there are actually no pc files for them in either pkg-config directory, even though the libraries are actually installed, and some have been installed just previous to the attempt to compile gDesklets, and from SuSE rpms, too. Apparently SuSE doesn't bother to always register its rpms with pkg-config.

I have written a couple of rudimentary pc files for the missing libraries, pointing at the correct locations, but entries for requirements, cflags etc. I can't even guess.

Is there anything you would suggest I should do? Apart from getting a different distro, that is :) - if I have to choose between gDesklets and having Yast2 and the other perks, I'll leave gDesklets. But I'd be willing to do serious restructuring work if necessary.

Robin

I couldn't agree more. I've just recently switched from RedHat to Suse for several reasons (mostly current kernel and their solid utilities like Yast). So far, I'm happy with the distribution, but have had great frustration with their filesystem and library structure. It is absolutely bizarre to me and it's been challenging for me to learn this distribution. I've found myself having to modify Makefiles to be sure current application tarballs get compiled correctly into the Suse tree.

My biggest challenge has been getting gDesklets to compile correctly in Suse 9.1 Professional. Some would say I've spent far too much time getting it to work, but, perseverence pays off. It can be done. Besides the gDesklets documentation being far from complete (and it's not even close in my opinion), what ended up working for me was not rushing out and downloading/installing the latest tarballs that the gDesklet folks recommend (things like libgtop-2.6 and pkg-config). I got caught up in that to the point that my system wouldn't load the Gnome desktop and I was forced to re-install.

So, my recommendation to you (if you haven't given up already - I see your post is a month old and I just got gDesklets running an hour ago) is install all the required packages from your Suse CDs. Then visit rpm.pbone.net. User their search page to search/download the latest packages for Suse 9.x ONLY! A perfect example of this is libgtop2. gDesklets recommends version 2.6, but I'm running gDesklets fine with version 2.0.8-53. Additionally, remember that ~/.gdesklets/gdesklets:0.0.log is your friend. It will tell you what is missing. I guarantee you will be installing a ton of libraries not mentioned in the gDesklets documentation. I relied heavily on Yast to search for missing packages. For example, I was missing an xml module when loading a display, so I installed (using an xml search in Yast) pyxml, python-xml and libxml.

One last tip to end this never-ending post, if you successfully get gDesklets installed and end up installing any gnome related packages to resolve any gnome problems, be sure to run gDesklets configure, make and make install again. Unfortunately I didn't document this excrutiation process, but I can certainly help you with packages I had to install to get it working.

Thanks for the reply, I haven't given up completely yet... I'll probably try it again, but right now I haven't got the time. I'll return to your post when I do.

Robin

Problems installing gDesklets
 

I'm a begginer in linux software.I've installed SuSE 9.1 pro, less than a month ago, and i'm loving it.
I've spent a lot of time on putting gDesklets working. I've installed correctly gDesklets-0.26-0.pm.2.noarch.rpm
and
gDesklets-base-0.26.1-0.pm.0.i586.rpm
but still when I try to execute gdesklets it returns this problem:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/gnome/bin/gdesklets", line 10, in ?
from main import init
File "/opt/gnome/share/gdesklets/main/__init__.py", line 38, in ?
from utils.i18n import Translator
File "/opt/gnome/share/gdesklets/utils/__init__.py", line 2, in ?
from GConfWatcher import GConfWatcher
File "/opt/gnome/share/gdesklets/utils/GConfWatcher.py", line 3, in ?
from gnome import gconf
ImportError: cannot import name gconf

I don't know how to resolve it, I hope that someone could help me.