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Howto Install Docky on Fedora

If you know me personally, then you know that I'm a big fan of GNOME Do. As a keyboard savvy person I use Do extensively. Do is an application launcher similar to the Mac app Quicksilver. However the GNOME Do team has been putting a lot of research and development into it from the initiation. Result: probably the best application launcher out there for any platform.

Some months ago, Do included an interesting theme called Docky which made the launcher acts as a dock (a la Mac, Avant, Cairo Dock, etc.). With the integration of GNOME Do, there's no need to say that Docky was super cool. And it started gaining features in a high speed. Ultimately Docky was getting so developed that it became a separate project.

Installing GNOME Do on a Fedora system is as easy as:
$ sudo yum install gnome-do

There are some packages with the names starting from gnome-do-plugins*. With the addition of these GNOME Do can truly enhance your desktop experience. Give it a fair try, I'm pretty sure you'll be impressed.

However installing Docky on Fedora is a different story. So here I am having being fiddling with Mono tools for a hour or two and successfully installed Docky, to help you.

I started with the above linked guide, found some info on the Net and had to figure out a few things for myself. So I'm taking some fine information from the respective sources, as usual. :)

Note: BTW, I tried this on my Fedora 13 system. I believe for closer Fedora releases should also behave similarly. My intention was to get Docky running. So if your Mono development environment breaks, don't blame me. ;)

1. Install dependencies from package repositories.

$ su -c 'yum install git mono-devel bzr bazaar automake intltool gcc GConf2-devel gtk-sharp-gapi-devel gtk-sharp2-gapi gtk-sharp2-devel gnome-desktop-sharp-devel gnome-keyring-sharp-devel mono-addins-devel ndesk-dbus-devel ndesk-dbus-glib-devel gtk+extra-devel notify-sharp-devel'


2. Get Gio# source (for dependency)
This step is not listed in the official guide. But since Fedora doesn't have the "gio-sharp" package in the repos, you'll need to build it from source, install and configure a few things.

For the simplicity let's assume that you are fetching the Gio# source to your home directory.

$ cd
$ git clone git://gitorious.org/gio-sharp/mainline.git gio-sharp

This command will fetch the source code of Gio# and place it in a directory named "gio-sharp". Alternatively you can instead use:
$ git clone http://git.gitorious.org/gio-sharp/mainline.git gio-sharp


3. Compile Gio#
Change into the directory with the Gio# code and compile.

$ cd ~/gio-sharp

There should be a file with a name similar to autogen-X.YZ.sh. In my case it was "autogen-2.22.sh". Run it like:
$ ./autogen-2.22.sh
$ make
$ su -c "make install"

Give the root password when prompted and it'll be installed.


4. Get the Docky source
Docky project uses Bazaar version controlling system (it's hosted on Launchpad). You can do:

$ bzr branch lp:docky

Needless to say, you'll need Internet access for the first few steps of this howto. The last command will create a directory named "docky" in your current directory.


5. Set a couple of Environment Variables
In order to build Docky properly we need to set a couple of Environment Variables. We can do this inside a configuration file such as ~/.bash_profile. (To set proper variables system-side you can use a file like /etc/profile)

Open the ~/.bash_profile file in your favourite text editor. Mine's Vim. :)

$ vim ~/.bash_profile

Enter these lines in the file

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
MONO_PATH=/usr/local/lib/mono/gio-sharp-2.0/

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH
export MONO_PATH

If you look carefully you'll noticed that what we set as MONO_PATH is the location where the gio-sharp.dll file was installed after the compilation.

Finally we need to either log out and log in to the system or run the following command:
$ source ~/.bash_profile

Now you are ready to compile and run Docky.


6. Compile Docky

Go to the directory with the Docky source (i.e. docky directory from Step 4)
$ cd ~/docky

Then run the configure and make commands:
$ ./autogen.sh
$ make
$ su -c "make install"

Now that you have Docky installed you may want to add it the startup programs. However make sure you try it first. Just run from any terminal
$ docky

And enjoy your work.



As you saw we a couple of unpackaged software at our hand, namely Gio# and Docky. You might even ask me to maintain those packages for Fedora. While I'm actually working towards becoming a Fedora package maintainer, I'm not sure I want to package Gio#. Someone who knows her/his way around the Mono dev environment should be better take care of it rather than me.


Anyway, I've written this down quickly after finishing my installation. So there might be mistakes. Let me know if you bump into a mistake done by me while writing thing. You can alway use the official guide as the baseline.


Disclaimer: I'm not a pro-mono or anti-mono zealot. I do have concerns about Mono's legal standing. But this post is just for people who want to get the awesome Docky running under Fedora.

Comments

  1. I want to try Do first.

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  2. Yes, it's probably easy to try it since it's in the repos of the major distros. And you also can get a taste by using the Docky theme of Do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I'm not much in to desktop gadgets. but this... wow, been using both do and docky just over a day and I'm loving it. thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  5. :) If you haven't tried yet, try SSH, Files & Directories, Services plugins. Plus the IM/Skype integrations are also cool.

    ReplyDelete
  6. hi Gaveen, Man thanx, your post was easy to follow for the second time, I guess the first time(about a week ago) I did not see a lot and follow correctly but now I just revisited it again and it worked just like you prescribed thanx.

    I use FC13 64 bit.
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Lefu: I wrote the post because the official guide didn't address a few small quirks. Glad to know it helped. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks for the post. None of this was at all obvious so it's always nice to find someone has clearly written it up. :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ben: Yes. If it wasn't obvious for me, chances are someone might find it useful. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous2:07 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous2:08 PM

    Just great. I made it, it works even on 64bit.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @industry: Glad to know it helped. :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous1:22 PM

    Thanks a lot. =)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous12:51 PM

    It's not working for me. It complains:


    checking for GIO_SHARP... configure: error: Package requirements (gio-sharp-2.0 >= 2.22.2) were not met:

    Requested 'gio-sharp-2.0 >= 2.22.2' but version of GIO is 2.22

    It looks like it needs 2.22.2 but i can't fond it.

    ReplyDelete
  15. @Fred: Hi, I'm not sure what exactly is the problem. But there are workarounds you can try.

    It seems like the gio-sharp repo on gitorious isn't maintained anymore. The last changes on master is a few months old.

    Luckily if you Google you get a couple of more places with the gio-sharp sources. As I said before I'm not keeping close tab on Mono development and I don't know which is the blessed repo. So I'm going to just pick the GitHub one.

    In the step (i.e, Step 2) where you clone gio-sharp repo, use the GitHub version instead of Gitorious one. It seems to be kept updated.

    Eg:
    $ git clone git://github.com/mono/gio-sharp.git gio-sharp
    Or,
    $ git clone http://github.com/mono/gio-sharp.git gio-sharp

    Then go ahead with the rest of the steps. This should hopefully help.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous9:02 PM

    It works now. Thank you Gaveen!

    ReplyDelete
  17. @Fred: Glad I could help. :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. hi i just installed fedora 13 on my laptop and its great so far but before i installed fedora i had ubuntu and ubuntu had docky. i didnt like ubuntu very much so i installed fedora it works perfectly but i really want to have docky on it. Could you tell me how to do it. am i supposed to install certain packages.

    ReplyDelete
  19. i just recently installed fedora 13 on my laptop and before i was running ubuntu 10. ubuntu was ok but i like fedora much more so im going to stick with it but i really want to install docky or something like it on fedora. its really easy to do it on ubuntu but its a bit harder on fedora could u please help me out i would really apprciate it. Thanx

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  20. wat do i hav to do to install docky on fedora do i have to install certain packages

    ReplyDelete
  21. The official guide now mentions that you need to install gio-sharp package from source. It's a good thing they've put it there.

    @Sanjay: Docky is not available in Fedora official repos (and nor in the Package DB or the Build System) and RPMFusion repos as of 14 September 2010. That's why I wrote this guide to help obtain the source code, compile it and install it in your system. It's inconvenient but it's probably the most trustworthy way.

    However if you are not willing to put up with doing this manually, then you can try your luck with Googling. I see there are some unofficial (i.e., not upstream or Fedora & RPMFusion) RPM packages out there. You can try but YMMV depending on how well they are made and maintained.

    I also hope that someone starts packaging and maintaining it for Fedora. But until such a time those are your immediate options.

    ReplyDelete
  22. gio-sharp is available in the RPMFusion repository.

    ReplyDelete
  23. @Marc: Did you really install from RPMFusion? I'm pretty sure I didn't find gio-sharp in rpmfusion-* repos, at least not in F13 i386 repos. And I still don't see it there. Maybe I'm missing something.

    Luckily gio-sharp is available in F14 repos which is due to be released in a few hours. If you'd like to use the package in F13 before that, you can install it from "Rawhide" (which will become F14 repos in a few hours time).

    ReplyDelete
  24. TrickyHarry4:16 AM

    I have followed your blog and have sucessfully installed Docky on Fedora 13 some months ago - and I have used it every day and it has been my #1 utility.

    I have now upgraded to Fedora 14 and Docky is now broken. I have re-ran "make clean", auto-config and make install.

    Now Docky is displayed, with the with of two helpers - rather than the correct width - I cannot see all the helpers.

    ReplyDelete
  25. TrickyHarry4:57 AM

    One issue may be the version of gio-sharp.

    The current build error:-
    ** (/usr/local/lib/docky/Docky.exe:11818): WARNING **: The following assembly referenced from /usr/local/lib/docky/Docky.exe could not be loaded:
    Assembly: gio-sharp (assemblyref_index=10)
    Version: 2.14.0.0
    Public Key: 35e10195dab3c99f
    The assembly was not found in the Global Assembly Cache, a path listed in the MONO_PATH environment variable, or in the location of the executing assembly (/usr/local/lib/docky/).


    ** (/usr/local/lib/docky/Docky.exe:11818): WARNING **: Could not load file or assembly 'gio-sharp, Version=2.14.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=35e10195dab3c99f' or one of its dependencies.

    Unhandled Exception: System.TypeLoadException: A type load exception has occurred.

    From the Fedora build:-
    rpm -qa | grep gio-sharp
    gio-sharp-0.2-2.fc14.x86_64

    Any suggestions ?

    ReplyDelete
  26. I've written a new post on how to get Ducky running under Fedora 14. You can see it at: http://gaveen.owain.org/2010/11/howto-install-docky-on-fedora-14.html

    @TrickyHarry: I'm really glad to hear that you had used my guide to install Docky on F13. However things are a little different with F14. Hope my new post helps you.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I'm on Fedora 14 now but I am sure that the only thing I had to compile was Docky itself.

    I just checked the F13 RPMFusion repository and it wasn't there. My bad.

    Maybe it was from the fedora updates repository and not RPMFusion. I posted the message before fedora 14 and I was not using rawhide...

    ReplyDelete
  28. Thanks for your great work, but I'm trying to install it on a Fedora 14 and I've got the following error on dbus:
    configure: error: Package requirements (dbus-sharp-1.0 >= 0.7) were not met:

    No package 'dbus-sharp-1.0' found

    Even I've installed it from repos, it is a lower version:
    [root@fetido docky]# yum info dbus-sharp
    Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
    Installed Packages
    Name : dbus-sharp
    Arch : x86_64
    Version : 0.63
    Release : 14.fc13

    Do you know how can i solve this?

    Many thanks in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  29. @Cibeles: Please see my new blogpost new blog post.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Thanks for your guide, it's very useful, one small thing, when i autoconfig docky the terminal says:

    checking for GIO_SHARP... configure: error: Package requirements (gio-sharp-2.0 >= 2.22.2) were not met:

    Requested 'gio-sharp-2.0 >= 2.22.2' but version of GIO is 2.22

    The trick is to edit:

    sudo gedit /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/gio-sharp-2.0.pc

    where says

    Version: 2.22

    edit to

    Version:2.22.2

    Done (anyways for me whith Fedora 16 x64)

    Hope it'll useful

    Liraan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:39 AM

      How to intall DockManager in Fedora?

      Delete
  31. Thanks for this blog posst

    ReplyDelete

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