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FreeBSD GNOME Project: GNOME 2.32 Upgrading FAQ

Contents

  1. What is new in GNOME 2.32?
  2. How do I upgrade to GNOME 2.32?
  3. The upgrade failed; what do I do?
  4. List of known GNOME 2.32 problems and their solutions
  5. I have found a bug; whom should I alert?
  6. I want the fame and glory of the FreeBSD GNOME team! What can I do to participate?

Full Text

  1. What is new in GNOME 2.32?

    Although the canonical summary of new features can be found at http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.32/, some of the most exciting new features of GNOME 2.32 are:

    • Evolution MAPI support has been added to the FreeBSD port to provide a richer experience for users of Microsoft Exchange servers.
    • Epiphany now uses WebKit as its HTML/JavaScript rendering engine.
    • Hal has been updated to fix some issues with volume probing, and to support volume names (labels) that contain spaces.
    • A preview of the GNOME Shell environment has been added to the ports tree (x11/gnome-shell). This environment is being slated to make its official appearance in GNOME 3.0.

  2. How do I upgrade to GNOME 2.32?

    The answer is relatively simple:

    1. To build GNOME 2.32, you need to obtain the latest ports tree skeleton. This is most easily accomplished with portsnap(8) or CVSup. Simply obtain the latest ports tree, and you are ready to go. Then do the following:

      # pkgdb -Ff
(resolve all moved or deleted ports)

# portupgrade -aW

      NOTE: it is recommended to run portupgrade -a to make sure you get all the necessary ports. The -W option simply makes things a bit faster by not doing a make clean after each port build.

      If you are a portmaster(8) user, make sure you have least 1.9 version. Then do the following:

      # portmaster -a

  3. The upgrade failed; what do I do?

    Unfortunately, this is not only possible, it is highly probable. There are many possible valid GNOME configurations, and even more invalid starting points. If the script fails, follow the instructions in the error message to let the FreeBSD GNOME team know about the failure.

    The majority of build failures will be dependency-related issues. One simple way to resolve the problem is to remove the offending port, re-run portupgrade or portmaster, and then reinstall the port when the upgrade process is complete.

  4. List of GNOME 2.32 problems and their solutions

    Although GNOME 2.32 is certainly the best release to date (of course), there are a couple regressions that slipped in, both in the GNOME code and in its implementation within FreeBSD. Some of the more visible issues are:

    • HAL can not unmount and reset the da[0-9] devices associated with USB disks when you manually detach them from the system. Manually removing a USB umass device while it is mounted can result in a panic. This is a known bug in FreeBSD. See kern/103258 and kern/89102 for more details.
    • Epiphany no longer saves passwords. This should be fixed in an upcoming release, but may get postponed until GNOME 2.30.
    • Epiphany has problems rendering certain compressed web sites (most notably http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/). The page will appear as compressed binary garbage. This is being wored on, and should be fixed in an upcoming release of libsoup.

  5. I have found a bug; whom should I alert?

    Please read the FreeBSD GNOME Project's documentation on reporting bugs.

  6. I want the fame and glory of being part of the FreeBSD GNOME team! What can I do to participate?

    Please read our list of ways to get involved!