GPE: The GPE Palmtop Environment

Binaries

Ångström Linux

The Ångström distribution ships GPE in the x11-images and provides up to date package feeds and images for various devices. This is the recommended distribution if you want to start support for a new device.

Debian GNU/Linux

Some GPE packages are available for Debian GNU/Linux in the Unstable and Testing feeds. The packages in stable Debian (and Ubuntu) are really old.

OpenZaurus/OpenEmbedded

GPE is included in OpenZaurus distribution 3.5.2 and later and in the OpenEmbedded build system. There is still some help needed to improve GPE adaption to several hardware platforms, so do not hestitate to contact us if you want to work on porting GPE to a particular device.

Familiar Linux

GPE is available for Familiar Linux as ready to run images for a few iPAQ devices.
Choose the GPE option when getting an image from the latest Familiar release. Currently GPE in Familiar is quite outdated and there are no updated GPE packages any more in the unstable feed. In general Familiar is obsolete unless you use a very old iPAQ (h3xxx).

Source

Releases

Release tar archives are being collected at http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/download/source/.

Accessing the GPE Subversion repository

In short, if you are not (yet?) a developer, you do the following to get an initial copy of the GPE sources:

	svn checkout svn://projects.linuxtogo.org/svn/gpe/trunk gpe_svn

You only have to do this once. The next time you want to update your copy of the sources, do:

      $ cd gpe_svn
      $ svn update

For more details about accessing the Subversion repository take a look at the GForge SCM page.

You can examine the SVN repository directly here.

Building GPE applications from SVN

There is no easy recipe for building GPE applications for the ARM architecture yet. For a start, check the GpeCrossCompilation wiki page. However, GPE can be built like any other application for your desktop. A makefile in 'gpe_svn/base' helps you build (most of) GPE:

      $ make -f Makefile.gpe DESTDIR=`pwd`/tmp-install install

make 3.80 or later is required, version 3.79.1 has been seen to not work. If this doesn't work for you: prerequisites for building GPE applications are libgpewidget and gpe-icons. Depending on the applications that you build, you may also need the below packages (-dev or -devel according to your distribution):

libsqlite-dev (sources),
dbus-1, dbus-glib-1-dev (sources),
libmimedir, libsoup (sources: use the sources from GNOME's CVS),
libbluetooth, libsdp2 (sources: bluez-libs from the BlueZ project),

So build libgpewidget before you attempt to compile one of the GPE applications:

      $ cd gpe_svn/base
      $ cd libgpewidget
      $ ./autogen.sh
      $ ./configure
      $ make
      $ make install
      $ cd ../gpe-icons
      $ make install