Compositor woes

[Bob Snyder]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:

> Also check the output to make sure it found libXcomposite, among other 
> things.  There should be some output like:
>
> checking for xrender... yes
> checking RENDER_CFLAGS... -I/usr/X11R6/include
> checking RENDER_LIBS... -lXrender -lX11 -lXext
> checking for XRRUpdateConfiguration in -lXrandr... yes
> checking for X11/extensions/Xrandr.h... yes
> checking for xcomposite >= 1.0 xfixes xdamage... yes
> checking COMPOSITOR_CFLAGS... -DXTHREADS -D_REENTRANT 
> -DXUSE_MTSAFE_API -I/usr/X11R6/include
> checking COMPOSITOR_LIBS... -lXcomposite -lXdamage -lXfixes -lX11
>
> You can check this manually by running:
> $ pkg-config xcomposite --modversion
> If that prints out an error, it means pkg-config can't find 
> xcomposite.pc, and you'll need to set your PKG_CONFIG_PATH env var 
> appropriately before running the installer.
>
Hi Brian,

Well that was it, mystery solved. One thing about the graphic installer 
is that you don't normally look at the output from configure and spot 
possible problems like this one. I agree that the configure should fail 
if you enable the compositor and it can't find xcomposite.pc.

Fwiw, xcomposite.pc was in /usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig which seems like a 
reasonable place for it to be. That's where X.org make put it.

Re: nvidia drivers, I have the nvidia proprietary driver and have had 
problems installing it. I'll get it going one of these days. Using the 
compositor with the open source version is slow, but not as bad as some 
people have indicated in postings.

I realize that the compositor support is still experimental, but I was 
wondering if there are plans to extend the effects to other elements of 
Xfce. Like drop shadows for menus and such.

The transparent panel is killer!

Many thanks Brian and Jan too.

Bob S.