Silverblue - Installing Xfce 4.19 from source

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1

Hi,

So I was thinking about building Xfce4 4.19 from the source to testing how the Wayland support is going BUT that got me thinking:

  1. Will I be able to install Xfce4 correctly? Assuming that some files will try to hit folder that may be read-only on Silverblue installation.
  2. If the Xfce4 gets installed successfully Will a “rpm-ostree rollback” break/remove Xfce4? I assume it will not but I just want to make sure.

Thanks for reading.

2

Added xfce

3

You might just want to check the fedora xfce spin at

to see how it works before mucking about with your atomic version.

Or maybe try using the atomic version in a VM and do your testing there so you don’t have damage on the main system.

4

Does the 40 edition ships Xfce4 4.19 through DNF?

Yeah. I still have hope someone will clarify my question without having to resort to a VM :smiley:

5

No. 4.19 is a ‘development’ release. Things will start being shipped in
the run up to 4.20.

6

Read up on how rpm-ostree works a bit

You need to package the XFCE packages as RPMs. You can use the spec files from the XFCE Spin files but change the source tarball.

Then you need to layer these rpms.

Rebase does not change overlaid RPMs, reset removes all.

Also have a look at the wayland session files and see that they are displayed in GDM.

7

Added atomic-desktops, rpm, rpm-ostree and removed wayland

8

So even if I managed to compile the source for 4.19 I would not be able to perform a regular (sort of) “make install”.

I think I going to spin-up a vm with a regular Workstation then u_u’

9

No, sudo make install, or sudo just install (used for COSMIC) dont work here.

You need to package an RPM.

So easy, accessible RPM packaging for whatever file you want to place in the read-only directories, is really the bottleneck of atomic desktops.

10

Thank you for the clarifications :slight_smile:

11

You can run rpm-ostree usroverlay to get a temporary writable overlay on top of /usr, run any make install scripts you want, test things and then reboot to go back to the default image.