Xfce on OpenSolaris

[Doug Scott]

Hi all,
   I thought I'd send quick note about Xfce on OpenSolaris. When I first saw
the latest version of Xfce, I thought it would be really cool to do a 
port for
OpenSolaris. A couple of days of mostly compiler specific changes,  I was
able to fully build and run Xfce 4.4.0 on OpenSolaris.  Since then, Xfce has
been added as a project to OpenSolaris under the desktop community.

- What does the mean?
    All the Solaris specific spec files and patches for Xfce,  are now 
placed into
    a subversion repository at the OpenSolaris site. Discussion of bugs 
and fixes
    will take place on the desktop-discussion list. Development of which 
is kept
    in-step and tested with Sun's JDS project (Gnome).

- Will it become part of Solaris?
    This is purely a question for Sun (I do not work for Sun). 
Currently, there is a
    very old version distributed on the companion CD. For now I assume 
Sun will
    continue that arrangement but now should always have the latest 
version. For
    other OpenSolaris distributions such as NexentraOS etc, it is 
totally up to them
    whether they include Xfce or not.

- Does the Xfce project on OpenSolaris support older versions of Solaris?
    The OpenSolaris project is not about old software, therefore the project
    will leave Solaris 8/9 support up to people like the blastwave 
community.
    Though they are totally free to use any work we have done.

- How is Xfce built on OpenSolaris?
    Since Xfce shares many libraries with Gnome (JDS on OpenSolaris), I 
have used
    the Common Build Environment from JDS to build Xfce. It uses RPM 
like spec files
    to compile/patch the source code into Solaris packages.

- What does this mean for the Xfce.org community as a whole?
    I hope that Xfce will be seen as a first class desktop for 
OpenSolaris, and it's development
    and use will increase the interest and development the Xfce.org 
project as whole.

- How can I find out more about Xfce on OpenSolaris?
    The project site can be found at 
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/xfce. The project
    has only just begun, so the site my seem a little small at the moment :)

If you have any questions. You can find me on this list, or on the 
desktop-discuss list on
OpenSolaris.org.

Doug