DragonflyBSD DE recommendation.

[sgt_learn]

I tried installing Xfce4 from source, to no avail. It appears that DF 3.0.2 is preloaded with packages that might conflict with installation of additional packages.
Can someone recommend a remedy or alternate desktop environment?

[daemonfowl]

Hi sgt_learn !
xfce4 is no longet that lightweight wm it used to be :-) .. how about trying golem ? since DF uses pkgsrc .. I find golem (on NetBSD) really coooooooool .. if you want something zen clean : CWM definitely ! & There is also fvwm ..

[thirdm]

I'm using ratpoison on DragonFly without problem, though that sounds not like what you're asking for, given that you asked for a "desktop environment."

Instead of building from source yourself can you try the pkgsrc version? They probably had to make patches to fit it to DragonFly. Xfce is not in the list of top 10 problematic ports John Marino listed in his recent email on the users mailing list, nor is it in this report of unsuccessful builds Justin Sherrill linked to in his latest post on DragonFly BSD Digest: http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/repor...ta/report.html for pkgsrc-2012Q2. If you want to stick with whatever pkgsrc version you're at, assuming it's an earlier one, I suspect that would work too.

[sgt_learn]

I am grateful for your response; your input helps to make me a better DF user.

I was looking for an alternative to resource hungry GNOME, and KDE (WOW! What a hog.).

Xfce has been around for awhile, is easy to use, feature packed, and it's development is continuing; however, it is not lightweight.
I tried installing Xfce4 from pkgsrc-2012Q2 source but the build kept bombing out in DF 3.0.2. My hunch is that there is a package conflict.

LXDE is easy to use and modest with resources but not well supported in pkgsrc (it's in WIP).

It appears DF 3.0.2 now comes equipped with FVWM and Fluxbox, among many other packages. Fluxbox is fine. I am familiar with it, it is frugal and fast.
Fluxbox exists in the lower realms of DEs: in fact, it is not a DE. It is a DIY DE.
When you use Fluxbox, you become a DE integrator; ergo Xfce and LXDE.

If you get a chance to install Xfce4 from pkgsrc, let me know your results.
I'm learning as I go.

[thirdm]

Originally Posted by sgt_learn

If you get a chance to install Xfce4 from pkgsrc, let me know your results.
I'm learning as I go.

It built okay for me. I got an error first try about libexif having security vulnerabilities, but when I continued with ALLOW_VULNERABLE_PACKAGES defined the rest built fine. This was on amd64 with with a recent pull of pkgsrc-2012Q2, make install run from /usr/pkgsrc/x11/xfce4-desktop:

# git show pkgsrc-2012Q2 | head
commit 8361a0a6228f6e228c614f17212c3a992f6e95d2
Author: pkgsrc fixup <pkgsrc@dragonflybsd.org>
Date:   Mon Aug 13 13:28:03 2012 -0700

    Fixup fromcvs/togit conversion

diff --git a/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2 b/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2
index dcd866f..6462ee6 100644
--- a/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2
+++ b/doc/CHANGES-pkgsrc-2012Q2

What error were you getting?

[sgt_learn]

As for build time error messages, I seem to remember complaints about pcre or libpcre being out of date and the build unable to continue. Using "make update" in these dependencies didn't help get Xfce4 built. Doing pkg_delete -f of pcre or libpcre exacerbated the problem.

This build problem occurs in the i386 version of DF-3.0.2.

I thank you for your advise.

[thirdm]

Hmmm, I decided to try actually running this xfce thing this morning and realized what I built wasn't the meta package but only one component named xfce4-desktop. I'm building the meta package now.

My version of pcre is pcre-8.30nb2. I'll let you know if I have problems.

One thought, have you tried pkg_rolling-replace on pcre? I'm thinking something like the gtk example in the man page, e.g.:

$ pkg_admin set rebuild=YES pcre
$ pkg_rolling-replace -rsv

Now when I do this I end up having to force the installation of a package or two along the way using pkg_add -D on the package just compiled. I'm a little fuzzy on the reason that's needed, being pretty new at DFBSD and pkgsrc myself. From the man page description of -D I guess maybe it's to tell pkgsrc to trust you about temporarily breaking an installed package that depends on the package you're updating until rolling replace gets around to rebuilding that package. But it seems like something pkg_rolling-replace ought to handle itself without the manual intervention.

I dunno, honestly, I'm starting the slow process of seeing if I can live without a packaging system at all, so perhaps I'm not the best one to give advice, being something of a whacko on this topic.

[thirdm]

Alright, it completed without problems on my system...

# pkg_info -R pcre
Information for pcre-8.30nb2:

Required by:
glib2-2.32.3nb1
libast-0.7nb7
xfce4-thunar-1.0.1nb10


# pkg_info -n xfce4
Information for xfce4-4.6.1nb13:

Requires:
glib2>=2.30.2nb3
gtk2+>=2.24.10nb1
libSM>=0.99.2
xfce4-mixer>=4.6.0
xfce4-mousepad>=0.2.16
gnome-icon-theme>=2.12.1nb2
xfce4-icon-theme>=4.4.3nb7
xfce4-print>=4.6.1nb8
xfce4-appfinder>=4.6.0
xfce4-thunar>=1.0.1nb10
xfce4-panel>=4.6.2nb9
xfce4-volman>=0.2.0nb2
xfce4-xarchiver>=0.5.2nb10
xfce4-orage>=4.6.0
xfce4-wm-themes>=4.6.0
xfce4-wm>=4.6.0
xfce4-desktop>=4.6.0
xfce4-gtk2-engine>=2.6.0
xfce4-session>=4.6.1nb8
xfce4-settings>=4.6.0
xfce4-terminal>=0.2.10
xfce4-utils>=4.6.0

All I can think is that you're trying to treat an upgrade situation like a normal fresh install situation (except where you hit trouble with pcre specifically). I'm not sure, but I think it may be best to use a tool like pkgchk or pkg_rolling-update to do updates of complicated packages. I mean, I guess it should work to do a pkg_delete -r on each package stopping your upgrade (assuming that's where you're at) and then do a normal make install to get the new versions, but that's tedious work.

Or maybe this isn't your situation at all. I don't have that many packages installed, so I may be missing a genuine conflict you're seeing:

# pkg_info -a | wc -l
458

[sgt_learn]

After failing to build Xfce4, I tried a fresh install of DF-i386-gui-3.0.2 again; followed by a pkg_rolling-replace -u before any attempt at building Xfce4.
This failed miserably.

I tried a fresh install of DF-i386-gui-3.0.2 followed by:
pkg_chk -g
pkg_chk -r
pkg_chk -as

This, also, turned into a mess of missing packages or outdated packages (and a missing checksum!).

[thirdm]

Not sure if you're still trying this, but I should point out above where I wrote pkg_add -D I should have written pkg_add -Au (Or just -u if it's something you want marked as manually installed). I'm hoping I may have something to avoid that problem (which I admit was not your problem), at least when I do bmake upgrade. Not sure it will help bmake replace and pkg_rolling-replace. I'll only know for sure next time I update packages:

1. Set UPDATE_TARGET=bin-install
2. Set BIN_INSTALL_FLAGS to -u.
3. Set BINPKG_SITES to nothing (unless you want what's on the ftp sites).

Also in my most recent upgrade cycle I happened on a useful thread for understanding the difficulty involved with pkg_rolling-replace. These two Greg Troxel posts, along with quotes of Alan Barret are particularly useful, but the whole thread is worth reading:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-...msg017229.html
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-...msg017239.html

Also see the pkgsrc guide and wiki (just saw the wiki now -- looks very useful):

http://wiki.netbsd.org/pkgsrc/how_to...ages/#index2h1

What the wiki and the thread above make clear is that pkg_rolling-replace is not meant as a reliable way for a user to upgrade without trying to work out what's going on when there's a problem and tweaking it to get over the hump. So the sorts of failures you were having maybe are to be expected and you have some puzzle you need to solve to get through it. It's either that or wipe clean your packages and reinstall them.

I think next time I may use pkgdepgraph to see if what I want to upgrade (based on security updates and staleness of what I really care about) has a single root dependency or two and then do a bmake update on that dependency instead of using pkg_rolling-replace. This replace target, not sure I want to have to deal with its limitations more than necessary. Is it a useful exercise to understand these pkg dependency issues in depth? Maybe once or twice, but after that I don't see how you're learning anything useful working through these issues.

[Trihexagonal]

Originally Posted by sgt_learn

Fluxbox exists in the lower realms of DEs: in fact, it is not a DE. It is a DIY DE.

In fact, it is a Window Manager.