30 May 2003 mx   » (Journeyer)

I decided to take Epiphany for a test-drive. It is the new default browser for Gnome 2, and has been described as a small, simple browser similar to what Galeon started out as.

Epiphany isn't available in binary format, but is fairly simple to build from source. These notes relate to Epiphany 0.6.1, Mozilla Mozilla 1.4b., and a fairly stock Redhat 9 install.

Building Mozilla 1.4a

The instructions on the Epiphany install page will work, but I found that you don't need to define the --prefix= parameter.

$ ./configure  --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2 --disable-mailnews 
  --disable-ldap --disable-debug --enable-optimize --disable-tests
  --enable-crypto  --enable-xft --with-system-zlib
...
$ make
... (zzz)
$ su
...
$ make install
...

The Mozilla build doesn't update the pkg-config repository, so you will have to do so by hand. Epiphany uses pkg-config to discover the build parameters for including and linking the Mozila bits. If you don't update the repository, the Epiphany configure script will fail to locate a suitable version of Mozilla. Pkg-config doesn't seem to require any reset, so simply copying the files will suffice.

$ su
...
$ cd mozilla
$ find -name mozilla-gtkmozembed.pc
$ cd <location of mozilla .pc files from above find>
$ cp *\.pc /usr/lib/pkgconfig/

Building Epiphany

Once Mozilla is built, installed, and the pkg-config repository updated, building Epiphany is simple. Perform the ritual configure, make, and make install dance. If configure fails, and the MOZILLA_COMPONENT_CFLAGS are set to the Mozilla 1.2, then the pkg-config wasn't updated correctly. See above for details.

Note, you shouldn't need to specify which Mozilla build to link to (ie., ./configure --with-mozilla-snapshot=1.4a) as the configure script should magically determine this when it runs pkg-config to get the Mozilla library build settings.

Assuming the build and install succeed, you will have to manually copy the Epiphany bonobo server files to the right location. If you start Epiphany without updating these files, you will get the following error:

"Bonobo couldn't locate the GNOME_Epiphany_Automation.server ..."

The suggested bonobo-slay and reboot don't fix the problem, as the install fails to install the server files to the correct location for Redhat 9. I'm guessing Redhat moved this directory or something.

$ cd epiphany*
$ su
...
$ cp data/GNOME_Epiphany_*server /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/

Now, Epiphany should startup.

Epiphany is clean and simple browser. I've only been using it for a few weeks now, and have found it stable overall. The bookmark system is interesting, and discussions on the mailing list show their keen interest to make it even better. I've heard people voice concerns over Gnome using Epiphany for the default browser, but it appears to be a very viable choice. Well done!

(I also posted this to my own pathetic, little blog.)

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