I am thinking of trying Compiz out in my BLFS system. Yeah, I want the wobbly windows when they move, I want the spinning cube thing.

Has anyone compiled compiz in their BLFS system? The docs on the compiz site make it appear straightforward but I know how that can often end up. Any tips? Things unmentioned to look out for?

Thank you.

Yes, for a couple BLFS cycles - and it works well. I'm using the 0.9.11 series (when I built BLFS 7.9 the latest was 0.9.11.3).

I do not use the more recent gtk3 versions. Remember that as a window manager, compiz is responsible for drawing the title bar with the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, and if you would like any gtk2 theme then you will need compiz built against gtk2. Compiz decorates any and all windows exactly same way, regardless of their gui libraries. It works fine with KDE (4 and 5), so yes, you can rotate the cube there too.

You will need:

zenity (latest gtk2-only version)
startup-notification
libcanberra
libgtop
metacity (version == 2.34 with gsettings backend)

Then build compiz. There is a DSO problem somewhere with compiz, though, and I don't have my notes handy. I remember it being an easy fix once I figured out how to edit the proper cmake file.

Another issue, you might need to replace your window manager using
(noting the cpp in there).

Nice!

I googled DSO and got unclear results. What do you mean?

Replace? I just put a line in my .xinitrc to call whatever window manager I am using on that day. Then I type startx.

p.s. Naturally things get interesting in unexpected ways. All downloads from the actual compiz web site go to 404. D'oh! Well, one works, the 0.9 main tarball ... but not the plugins nor any of the other files. Guess I'm ten years too late.

No you're certainly not too late. In recent years most of the work on Compiz has moved over to Canonical. The source tarballs are best downloaded from Ubuntu. Debian has not officially supported compiz in Wheezy and Jessie but it appears it finally made it in the official repository for Stretch.

To get version 0.11.3, try going to https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/t...updates/compiz and download the file compiz_0.9.11.3+14.04.20160425.orig.tar.gz listed near the bottom.

Nowadays the plugins as well as ccsm are all built from the main source tarball, so you only need this one.

DSO problems are caused by Makefiles not explicitly listing all of the libraries that the linker should be aware of. Suppose a program depends on liba and libb, and liba depends on libb. Previously, the linker could find libb through liba if the program's Makefile didn't list libb. Newer versions of gcc clamp down on this and require all dependencies to be explicitly listed. This is old but it sort of explains what is going on. Typically you need to just add the library in the LIBS line of the Makefile. The B/LFS books generally handle this in a 'sed' command if and when it needs to be done.

The "replace" switch for compiz is generally how to launch compiz if another window manager is already running. So it shouldn't be needed if there is no window manager running. Or does it? I've never tried it on a "naked" X session.

Well, it turns out that every version of zenity actually requires GTK 3. Maybe Compiz can run without zenity but I'm not going to bother to try.

Calling this a bust. Abandon project. Abandon thread. Thanks for the replies.

zenity 2.32 is fine. Just FYI, I don't have GTK3 anywhere on this system. Don't mind the "requirements" listed on the Ubuntu pages; sometimes those just mean "required to get the program/library to build the way we want". It really should be a straightforward build though.

I have recently tried to compile the new compiz release:

https://launchpad.net/compiz/0.9.14/....9.14.0.tar.xz

Unfortunately the build system still has lots of problems.

IMO it is quite a mess and may take more time to fix problems.

It's very difficult to regain momentum in projects that have been, more
or less, abandoned at one point in time.