rofi/INSTALL.md

Installation guide

This guide explains how to install rofi using its build system and how you can make debug builds.

Rofi uses autotools (GNU Build system), for more information see here.

DEPENDENCY

For building:

• C compiler that supports the c99 standard. (gcc or clang)
• make
• autoconf
• automake (1.11.3 or up)
• pkg-config
• flex 2.5.39 or higher
• bison
• check (Can be disabled using the --disable-check configure flag) check is used for build-time tests and does not affect functionality.
• Developer packages of the external libraries

External libraries

• libpango
• libpangocairo
• libcairo
• libcairo-xcb
• libglib2.0 >= 2.40
  • gmodule-2.0
  • gio-unix-2.0
• librsvg2.0
• libstartup-notification-1.0
• libxkbcommon >= 0.4.1
• libxkbcommon-x11
• libxcb (sometimes split, you need libxcb, libxcb-xkb and libxcb-randr libxcb-xinerama)
• xcb-util
• xcb-util-wm (sometimes split as libxcb-ewmh and libxcb-icccm)
• xcb-util-xrm new module might not be available in your distribution. The source can be found here

On debian based systems, the developer packages are in the form of: <package>-dev on rpm based <package>-devel.

Install from a release

Check dependencies and configure build system:

./configure

Build Rofi:

make

The actual install, execute as root (if needed):

make install

The default installation prefix is: /usr/local/ use ./configure --prefix={prefix} to install into another location.

Install a checkout from git

The GitHub Pages version of these directions may be out of date. Please use INSTALL.md from the online repo or your local repository.

Make a checkout:

git clone https://github.com/DaveDavenport/rofi
cd rofi/

Pull in dependencies

git submodule update --init

Generate build system:

autoreconf -i

Create a build directory:

mkdir build

Enter build directory:

cd build

Check dependencies and configure build system:

../configure

Build rofi:

make

The actual install, execute as root (if needed):

make install

Options for configure

When you run the configure step there are several you can configure. (To see the full list type ./configure --help ).

The most useful one to set the installation prefix:

./configure --prefix=<installation path>

f.e.

./configure --prefix=/usr/

Install locally

or to install locally:

./configure --prefix=${HOME}/.local/

Options for make

When you run make you can tweak the build process a little.

Verbose output

Show the commands called:

make V=1

Debug build

Compile with debug symbols and no optimization, this is useful for making backtraces:

make CFLAGS="-O0 -g3" clean rofi

Get a backtrace

Getting a backtrace using GDB is not very handy. Because if rofi get stuck, it grabs keyboard and mouse. So if it crashes in GDB you are stuck. The best way to go is to enable core file. (ulimit -c unlimited in bash) then make rofi crash. You can then load the core in GDB.

gdb rofi core

Where the core file is located and what its exact name is different on each distributions. Please consult the relevant documentation.

Install distribution

Debian or Ubuntu

apt install rofi

Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial

Please note that the latest version of rofi in Ubuntu 16.04 is extremely outdated (v0.15.11)

This will cause issues with newer scripts (i.e. with clerk) and misses important updates and bug-fixes. Newer versions of Rofi however requires versions of xcb-util-xrm and libxkbcommon that are not available in the 16.04 repositories. These need to be manually installed before rofi can be installed either via source code or Zesty version from the ubuntu's launchpad page for rofi.

Fedora

rofi from russianfedora repository and also Yaroslav's COPR (Cool Other Package Repo)

ArchLinux

pacman -S rofi

Gentoo

An ebuild is available, x11-misc/rofi. It's up to date, but you may need to enable ~arch to get the latest release:

echo 'x11-misc/rofi ~amd64' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords

for amd64 or:

echo 'x11-misc/rofi ~x86' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords

for i386.

To install it, simply issue emerge rofi.