3.2. Local installation and test environment

In order to develop or evaluate GPE applications on a PC without crosscompiling it is very useful to have a local test setup. Instead of an emulator which is used for similar application frameworks you only need an X server for GPE. To get a PDA-like test environment you can use Xoo (formerly matchbox-nest) to emulate the look and feel of your device. If your distribution ships the packages to set up Some applications and libraries necessary for the GPE test environment are available in Ubuntu and Debian. What you should have installed is this:

• matchbox

• matchbox-desktop

• matchbox-panel

• Xephyr or Xnest

• Xoo or matchbox-nest

• matchbox

All of this should be available in distributions based on Debian.

Then start to build the very basic GPE bits you need to get everything up and running.

1. Build and install gpe-confd, if you install gpe-confd on your local system remove /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70gpe-confd as it might break Gnome.

2. Build and install libgpewidget, if you don't have Cairo you maybe want to --disable-cairo.

3. Install gpe-conf unless you intend to use (and emulate) a device with a big (>640x480) screen.

If you have everything in place you are ready for a test run to bring up the whole thing. First start Xoo or matchbox-nest. These default to provide a nested X server running on the local display :1. If you want to use a custom screen size or do not have these you can run Xnest like this:

			Xnest -ac -geometry 240x320 :1
		

Adjust the geometry parameters according to the display resolution of your need.

In a terminal window set the correct DISPLAY environment fot the nested X server:

			export DISPLAY=:1
		

Then bring up your session and configuration server from this terminal:

			matchbox-session&
			gpe-confd&
		

And finally start the gpe-conf look & feel tool to set up font sizes and toolbar display either from the desktop you just launched (Settings->Look & Feel) or from terminal (gpe-conf theme).

You now have the basic environment to build and test GPE applications. To build the remaining GPE applications you the dependency list at http://handhelds.org:8080/gpe/wiki?p=GpeDependencyMap might help to identify the dependencies. If you build GPE software which is not listed there please add it to the wiki, it is editable by anyone.