HOWTO: Cinnamon compile and run guide

[Arrow2Knee]

I struggled with this for almost a week now, and I don't want to happen that also to you guys, so here a little guide on how you should compile and run Cinnamon yourself.

First, you will need git, most of you will already have this installed, but still execute the command:

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sudo apt-get install git

Now, you want to retrieve the Cinnamon code, so execute

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git clone https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon.git

This should create a new directory, named Cinnamon. We move there:

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cd Cinnamon

Now, before compiling, we need a couple of depencies. I spend days of finding out which. Luckily for you guys, my kindness doesn't know any limits, so here is the command:

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install libfolks-dev gnome-common libxml++2.6-dev libtelepathy-glib-dev libgtk-3-dev libnm-glib-dev libmutter-dev libsoup-gnome2.4-dev libgnome-menu-3-dev libgirepository1.0-dev libcanberra-gtk3-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libpolkit-agent-1-dev libtelepathy-logger-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libgjs-dev libcroco3-dev libgconf2-dev libgnome-desktop-3-dev libpulse-dev libecal1.2-dev libedataserverui-3.0-dev

Hehe, all that installing, now finally the compile process. I am using sudo because it doesn't seem to work any other way for me.

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sudo autogen.sh

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sudo make

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sudo make install

If nothing went wrong, Cinnamon is now installed, you can run it by executing:

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sudo Cinnamon --replace

You don't even have to log out, how awesome is this?

If you want to start it using the login manager, install the cinnamon-session package:

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sudo apt-get install cinnamon-session

I hope you spent a maximum of 15 minutes on this guide, instead of me, which it costed a week. But I'm happily to do that for such a loving community

Greetz!
Arrow2Knee

[xenopeek]

Move here by moderator

Thanks for sharing your solution! I was about to post a link to this on your other post... Doh!

[Kevin108]

First and foremost: I love how your post morphed from asking a question into being a tutorial. Thank you for your work!

Noob's questions: Is following this guide and compiling Cinnamon better than just installing cinnamon and cinnamon-session? Once compiled, can it be updated through our regular automated methods?

[Arrow2Knee]

First and foremost: I love how your post morphed from asking a question into being a tutorial. Thank you for your work!

Noob's questions: Is following this guide and compiling Cinnamon better than just installing cinnamon and cinnamon-session? Once compiled, can it be updated through our regular automated methods?

Well, I haven't figured out how to compile cinnamon-session yet, as I don't find the source. Firstly, you will also have the slight performance boost with self compiled software. That's just one thing, which won't matter. Second, you learn about things by building them up. By finding a way to compile each program, you will learn little more about the OS and its functionality. Third, I was planning to help developing some with Cinnamon, but before that, I had to discover how to compile it in normal phase.

As for your second question, you will not be able to update it using the update manager as it isn't just a package you installed. You can just use

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git pull

while in the Cinnamon directory and then do the compiling process again.

Hope this helped you out

[Monsta]

Once compiled, can it be updated through our regular automated methods?

Most probably, no. That's the usual trap of the tutorials that explain how to "make install" but don't tell anything about how you should keep the source tree intact (so you can "make uninstall" later) or about possible conflicts when you decide to install a newer version via dpkg/apt/synaptic/etc.

One of the methods to avoid this trap is using checkinstall instead of "make install".

More info here:
1) viewtopic.php?f=90&t=9847&p=61048
2) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CheckInstall
3) googling something like "checkinstall deb"

[Arrow2Knee]

Once compiled, can it be updated through our regular automated methods?

Most probably, no. That's the usual trap of the tutorials that explain how to "make install" but don't tell anything about how you should keep the source tree intact (so you can "make uninstall" later) or about possible conflicts when you decide to install a newer version via dpkg/apt/synaptic/etc.

One of the methods to avoid this trap is using checkinstall instead of "make install".

More info here:
1) viewtopic.php?f=90&t=9847&p=61048
2) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CheckInstall
3) googling something like "checkinstall deb"

Just git pull and compile again?

[macabu]

It's missing a package: libmuffin-dev

And also I got this error (after running "sudo ./autogen.sh"):

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...

checking for GStreamer (needed for recording functionality)... no
checking for CINNAMON... yes
checking for CINNAMON_PERF_HELPER... yes
checking for CINNAMON_HOTPLUG_SNIFFER... yes
checking for BROWSER_PLUGIN... yes
./configure: line 15479: syntax error near unexpected token `$GOBJECT_INTROSPECTION_MIN_VERSION'
./configure: line 15479: `GOBJECT_INTROSPECTION_CHECK($GOBJECT_INTROSPECTION_MIN_VERSION)'


Thanks!

[cwwgateway]

I am a newbie with compiling things, but I followed all of the steps (as far as I know), but whenever I run

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sudo make

I get the message

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make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

The only thing that I didn't paste directly from the tutorial was instead of

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sudo autogen.sh

I had to use

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sudo ./autogen.sh

because otherwise it didn't work. I have tried various files with

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sudo make --makefile=...

As I said, I am a newbie with compiling, so I probably did something wrong.

[cwwgateway]

I installed libmuffin-dev and now I get the same error when running autogen.sh as the above poster (above my first post)

[Joe_D]

You also have to install gobject-introspection.

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sudo apt-get install gobject-introspection

Then follow the instructions and Cinnamon should compile.

[cwwgateway]

You also have to install gobject-introspection.

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sudo apt-get install gobject-introspection

Then follow the instructions and Cinnamon should compile.

Thanks! It worked well!

[mordant23]

I found I could replace

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sudo ./autogen.sh
sudo make

with

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./autogen.sh
make

after I changed the permissions on some of the folders. I forget which ones I had to change, but the error messages will tell you exactly which folders were denied access due to permissions. Since I've had no need to use sudo except for

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sudo make install

.