FreeBSD ports overlay to test xfce 4.13

These are experimental ports, not ready for production use. Use at your own risk.

This repository contains a FreeBSD ports overlay with XFCE desktop environment ports updated to version 4.13 of the desktop, which is the development desktop on which the future version 4.14 will be based.

XFCE 4.14 was released on 11 August 2019.

Code review for the update to the ports tree is available here:

https://reviews.freebsd.org/D21278

In preparation for XFCE 4.14 final I'm now running this set of patches on my own desktop systems with success, and plan to commit these (updatesd to 4.14 packages) soon after the official release of XFCE 4.14.

I can't give any warranties about stability, usability of these packages or future availability of the binary repository described below.

How to test

Compiling yourself

Easiest way to use this overlay is through portshaker.

to grab this repo as a source you can create a file /usr/local/etc/portshaker.d/xfce413:

. /usr/local/share/portshaker/portshaker.subr
if [ "$1" != '--' ]; then
        err 1 "Extra arguments"
fi
shift
method="git"
git_clone_uri="https://github.com/madpilot78/FreeBSD-xfce4.13.git"
run_portshaker_command $*

Configure portshaker to include this overlay in whatever ports tree you need it (I strongly suggest using poudriere) and compile your own packages.

NOTE: If you want to compile the sysutils/xfce4-places-plugin port you should manually remove it's line from MOVED after merging the trees. Portshaker will not do this automatically.

Binary packages

These are provided on a best effort basis and no availability warranty is given.

If you are confident of the binaries I'll provide this will save you time.

Please note that these binaries will be most often built with WITH_DEBUG enabled.

I'm periodically building a package set for FreeBSD 12.0 (amd64) from these ports which can be found at https://pkg.madpilot.net/120amd64-xfce413

These packages are signed with an RSA key, you should use the following cert to verify the signature:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----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-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

(changed on 2019-05-01)

I'll assume you saved the cert in /usr/local/etc/pkg/xfce413.cert.

Since the repo I'm building is only partial best way to use it is to configure it alongside the "latest" official packages repo with an higher priority, so you could add to /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/xfce413.conf:

xfce413: {
  url: https://pkg.madpilot.net/120amd64-xfce413,
  mirror_type: none,
  signature_type: pubkey,
  pubkey: /usr/local/etc/pkg/xfce413.cert,
  enabled: yes,
  priority: 1
}

FreeBSD: {
  url: "pkg+http://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest",
  priority: 0
}

after this pkg should install xfce packages from my repo.

NOTE: If changing configuration on a machine which already has xfce packages installed from the official repositories you may need to set CONSERVATIVE_UPGRADE to false in pkg.conf for pkg to switch the already installed packages to my repo.

Notes

LightDM

LightDM default configuration is now tweaked to not use locked memory on FreeBSD. Also other bugs have been fixed, so it should now work reliably.

In case you want to use locked memory you need to set lock-memory=true in /usr/local/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, then edit /etc/login.conf and in the daemon: section raise the memorylocked value from 128M to 256M:

daemon:\
        :memorylocked=256M:\
        :tc=default:

After this rebuild the database:

# cd /etc
# cap_mkdb login.conf

Then reboot.

Known issues

These are known issues with these modified ports which need to be worked on:

Gobject Introspection support

Some ports have GIR (Gobject Introspection) options, I still have to test these.

GIR options have been tested and ports compile fine with them now.

xfce4-mixer

The xfce-mixer port, which has been unsupported upstream since xfce 4.10, now fails to compile.

I fixed this and now compiles and seems to work fine. This is anyway unsupported upstream and can't be fixed indefinitely.

LightDM

Making LightDM the default display manager for XFCE would be a good thing (IMHO).

This has been fixed. I plan to make it the default suggested Display Manager for xfce.

Open bug reports upstream

These are bug reports I have opened upstream about bugs in development versions of the XFCE software.

Workspace switcher panel plugin

While testing on my desktop I have noticed the desktop switcher is not properly working when moving miniatures between desktops.

This was already reported upstream and a fix committes, so it will be fixed in the final version:

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15703

https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/commit?id=95319248145b5506f5a639c7ccdd7732772d74bd

Pull request for LightDM envionment reset code:

canonical/lightdm#78 Merged upstream.