Google Site SearchFN Site Search FN Blog Login FN Blog Login
Site Navigation:
 
 

HOWTO: Building Metisse RPM package for Fedora Core

by Thomas Chung on Oct 07, 2004

Metisse is an experimental X desktop with some OpenGL capacity. It is constituted by a virtual X server called Xwnc, a special version of FVWM and an FVWM module FvwmAmetista (after Ametista).

Xwnc is a mix of Xvnc and XDarwin. It draws nothing on your screen, every things is drawn into pixmaps. Similarly as Xvnc, but with a different protocol, Xwnc can send these pixmaps (and others information) to a "viewer". FvwmAmetista is such a viewer, it uses OpenGL (via nucleo) for rendering the X desktop into a window of a "regular" 3D accelerated X server.

Before I begin, I would like to thank Olivier Chapuis who helped me to trouble-shoot some of the issues I was having and pointing me to the additional helpful documents.

In this article, I'll be using metisse version 0.3.3 on Fedora Core 2 as an example and you will find pre-compiled RPM packages for FC1 and FC2 at the bottom this article.

As requirements, you will need to install nucleo and wm-icons RPM packages first.

[tchung@localhost requirements]$ ls
nucleo-0.1-1.fc2.i386.rpm  wm-icons-0.3.0-1.fc2.i386.rpm
[tchung@localhost requirements]$ sudo rpm -Uvh *.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:wm-icons               ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:nucleo                 ########################################### [100%]
[tchung@localhost requirements]$
To build the RPM package, you'll need:
Tarball - metisse-0.3.3.tar.bz2
Spec File - metisse.spec
Source1 File - metisse-session
Source2 File - metisse.desktop

BTW, metisse.desktop is display manager desktop to allows you logs into METISSE session for FC2. It's not a gnome menu desktop.

Let's begin:
(Make sure you have created rpmbuild directory in your own home.)

[tchung@localhost metisse]$ ls
metisse-0.3.3.tar.bz2  metisse.desktop  metisse-session  metisse.spec  requirements
[tchung@localhost metisse]$ cp *.bz2 *.desktop metisse-session ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/ 
[tchung@localhost metisse]$ cp *.spec ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/
[tchung@localhost metisse]$ rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/metisse.spec
Executing(%prep): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.94045
+ umask 022
+ cd /home/tchung/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ LANG=C
+ export LANG
+ unset DISPLAY
+ rm -rf /var/tmp/metisse-0.3.3-buildroot
+ cd /home/tchung/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ rm -rf metisse-0.3.3
+ /usr/bin/bzip2 -dc /home/tchung/rpmbuild/SOURCES/metisse-0.3.3.tar.bz2

...omitted...

Wrote: /home/tchung/rpmbuild/SRPMS/metisse-0.3.3-2.FC2.src.rpm
Wrote: /home/tchung/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/metisse-0.3.3-2.FC2.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/tchung/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/metisse-debuginfo-0.3.3-2.FC2.i386.rpm
Executing(%clean): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.36546
+ umask 022
+ cd /home/tchung/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ cd metisse-0.3.3
+ rm -rf /var/tmp/metisse-0.3.3-buildroot
+ exit 0
[tchung@localhost metisse]$

To install the RPM package,

[tchung@localhost metisse]$ sudo rpm -Uvh /home/tchung/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/metisse-0.3.3-2.FC2.i386.rpm
Password:
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:metisse                ########################################### [100%]
[tchung@localhost metisse]$

As I described above, this RPM package installs a session called METISSE for FC2 login display manager. Before you logout and login with METISSE session, make sure to edit following file to match with your screen resolution.

[tchung@localhost metisse]$ sudo vi /usr/bin/metisse-session

Xwnc -ac -geometry 1600x1200 :1 &
metisse-start-fvwm -- -t

Here is the screenshot of Login Display Manager with Metisse Session selected.

Here is the screenshot of Two Mozilla Windows Crossed in 3D Metisse Session.

Here are more screenshots from the project: http://insitu.lri.fr/~chapuis/metisse/screenshots/.

Here are the pre-compiled RPMs for metisse version 0.3.3 for FC1 and FC2.

Here are some useful Key Bindings:

Ctl-Shift F1    : reset all the 3D transformation
Ctl-Shift F2/F3 : Z rotations
Ctl-Shift F4/F5 : Y rotations
Ctl-Shift F6/F7 : X rotations
Ctl-Shift F8/F9 : zoom in/out the full desktop
Ctl-Shift o     : XY roation
For more information on running Metisse, please read http://insitu.lri.fr/~chapuis/metisse/running.html