Sugar with sugar-jhbuild

One of the easiest ways to install Sugar is to use sugar-jhbuild.

Sugar-jhbuild will automatically download the latest of Sugar's dependencies as well as Sugar itself directly from their source repositories, rather than relying on source packages that may have become stale. Below are generic instructions on how to use sugar-jhbuild to get up and running with Sugar.

Note: Some Linux distributions may need or have special procedures; you can check the pages on installing Sugar to see if they are available.

Checkout sugar-jhbuild

git-clone git://dev.laptop.org/sugar-jhbuild

Build sugar base system and its dependencies

Change directory and start the build.

cd sugar-jhbuild
./sugar-jhbuild update
./sugar-jhbuild build-base
./sugar-jhbuild build

For the base packages (i.e. build-base), you may be able to use the binary packages from your GNU distribution instead of building them from scratch. Check the Installing or Linux categories for specific distro info.

Run Sugar

This command launches the Sugar emulator:

./sugar-jhbuild run

To exit the emulator, press Alt-Q.

Run an individual activity

Within the sugar shell (./sugar-jhbuild shell), this command launches an individual activity for testing (from the mailing list):

sugar-activity [bundle name]

Other commands

JHBuild has several other commands that can be useful for development. You can get an overview with:

./sugar-jhbuild --help-commands

A useful sequence of commands for building Sugar, from the Sugar mailing list:

./sugar-jhbuild update
./sugar-jhbuild build-base
./sugar-jhbuild build
./sugar-jhbuild run

Customize

To customize the build create a configuration file, named .olpc.jhbuildrc, in your home directory.

Write access to the repositories

If you have write access to the repositories you can add:

repos['gnome.org'] = ':ext:marco@cvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome'
repos['mozilla.org'] = ':ext:marco%gnome.org@cvs.mozilla.org:/cvsroot'
repos['git.laptop.org'] = 'git+ssh://dev.laptop.org/git/artwork'

External links

• JHBuild manual
• Red Hat Magazine article: Introducing Sugar