Building fluxbox from source

What do I need?

Fluxbox can be built with the usual common building tools (gcc, gpp, make etc) and libx11 development libraries (usually libx11-devel and/or libx11-dev).

If you get errors like this

 checking for X... no configure: error: Fluxbox requires the X Window System libraries and headers.

Then try installing these packages (or similar ones)

xlibs-dev
x-window-system-dev
x11-devel

Where do I get the source?

You can always get the latest source from http://fluxbox.org/download or from the GIT repository.

Building fluxbox (short description)

$ tar -zxvf fluxbox-*.tar.gz  OR  tar -jxvf fluxbox-*.tar.bz2
$ cd fluxbox
$ ./configure
$ make
$ su
# make install

Notes: configure can take other arguments. They are described below. You can use sudo instead of su. Default install path is /usr/local/bin/fluxbox/

Ok, I have everything. Now how do I build it? (Long description)

First untar the archive you have downloaded:

for a *.tar.gz compressed file, issue the command:

tar -zxvf fluxbox-*.tar.gz

and for a .tar.bz2 compressed file, issue the command:

tar -jxvf fluxbox-*.tar.bz2

NOTES! Replace * with the version number for the full file name in the above instructions and also please note that you need gzip utilities for tar.gz and bzip2 utilities for tar.bz2.

Then change into the unpacked Fluxbox source code directory with this command:

$ cd fluxbox

Now you will be in the top level directory with the previously unpacked source code. You should read the README and INSTALL files located there.

Continue with:

$ ./configure

If you want to enable xinerama (multiple monitors) use ./configure --enable-xinerama and if you want to use png icons (and you have imlib2 development packages installed) you can use ./configure --enable-imlib2. Or even both, like ./configure --enable-xinerama --enable-imlib2. Easy, huh?

If in any doubt you can run the command ./configure --help to see all the options available.

When that is finished you must build the binary with:

$ make

Finally install the new shiny build:

$ sudo make install

Or if that doesn't work for your set up (you need to be root to install unless you built Fluxbox to install in your $HOME):

$ su
# make install

Fluxbox will install into /usr/local/share/fluxbox

What is git version and why should I use it?

Git version of Fluxbox is the latest development version available for testing. So if you want to try bleeding edge features, help hunting bugs or create a custom patches, this is what you should use.

Getting the git version and installing it

You need git, automake-tools and autoconf-tools to be installed.

First please read-up on git usage here

To get the sources and prepare for compilation you need to type:

$ git clone git://git.fluxbox.org/fluxbox.git && cd fluxbox && ./autogen.sh

After this you can go the usual way:

$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

Please note that this does not enable additional features. So if you want to use Xinerama, use ./configure --enable-xinerama and for png icons (imlib2) add --enable-imlib2

This will compile the souces and install it into the standard directories /usr/local/bin for the fluxbox binary and /usr/local/share/fluxbox/ for system wide config files and system styles.

For an easy update you only need:

$ cd fluxbox && git pull && make && sudo make install

Getting an older revision from the git repositories

Why would you want to do this ?

• Maybe you have something broken on your system and the latest git version cant compile, but you remember compiling revision X...
• Maybe you found a bug that hasnt been addressed yet.
• Maybe you want to use a patch that doesnt work with the bleeding-edge stuff.

Whatever the motives - here is the way to go:

 $ git checkout commitId

Of course you need to replace the commitId with revision commit you want.

Category:English howtos