HowTo install Xfce into home directory

[Benedikt Meurer]

Peeter Vois wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was trying to install Xfce into home directory in order to check 
> quality of translation and not to disturb others who are using Xfce 4.2. 
> I used the oscillation binary package. It was proposing me nicely to 
> install Xfce into /home/myname/local. The installation was successful, 
> though it was needed to modify the ~/.Xclients file to execute the 
> /home/myname/local/bin/startxfce4 script. I also modified the PATH 
> system variable.
> 
> New Xfce started succesfully. But looks like it does not search themes 
> and icons from subdirectories of /home/myname/local but still looks at 
> /usr subdirectories. For example thunar is not able to show folder 
> icons, configuration-manager is not able to show icons for some new 
> configuration items and so on. Also there were problems with adding 
> items into panel, the panel got idle and no menu with items appeared.

You can link the themes to ~/.themes to make them available to GTK.
There's also a GTK environment variable for theme paths, but I do not
remember it right now.

> I have found no HowTo on Xfce wiki or related pages.

Feel free to create a howto. ;-)

> Best Regards,
> Peeter Vois

Benedikt