Thunar - build, test, and debugging suggestions
Building Thunar
Clone the sources (required packages: git):
git clone https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/thunar
Enter build folder:
cd thunar
Execute autogen (required packages: build-essential, automake):
./autogen.sh
If any dependencies are missing, autogen will tell you. Depending on your distribution, installing the “dev” version of the dependent packages might be sufficient. (e.g. package: libexo-2-dev, libxfce4ui-2-dev, … (naming might differ between distributions)) If that does not help, you will need to build and install the dependencies from source as well.
When autogen has finished successfully (all required dependencies have been installed), you can build thunar:
make
You don't need to install Thunar for testing, you can run it directly from the source folder. Here is my personal script for starting thunar from source:
#!/bin/bash # Quit any running thunar instance and start a new thunar from source. Enable debug messages THUNAR_TEST_FOLDER=/path/to/thunar/testing/folder echo "./thunar/thunar -q;./thunar/thunar $THUNAR_TEST_FOLDER" ./thunar/thunar -q;G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all ./thunar/thunar $THUNAR_TEST_FOLDER
Debugging Thunar
For debugging Thunar, I use the following:
#!/bin/bash echo "./thunar/thunar -q; gdb thunar/.libs/thunar" ./thunar/thunar -q; gdb thunar/.libs/thunar
If you want to test thunar-plugins, it is required to install thunar.
You can install Thunar with:
sudo make install
Note that, per default, Thunar will be installed in parallel to the Thunar of your distribution, into the “/usr” folder. You can uninstall it with:
sudo make uninstall
For more infoormation, check the INSTALL file in the source code!
Thunar Build Flags
Here is a small collection of flags which often needs to be passed to ./autogen.sh :
--enable-gtk-doc : Creates html documentation inside /doc --enable-introspection : for usage of the GtkInspector --prefix <install_dir>: install thunar to install_dir --enable-maintainer-mode --enable-debug=full|yes|minimum|no