UPDATE: I followed up with Awesome window manager almost vindicated.

Attempted to install http://awesome.naquadah.org/download/awesome-3.2.1.tar.bz2 on PCLinuxOS 2007, updated very recently.

I did ‘make’ a few times, to learn the dependencies:

apt-get install gperf imlib2-data libimlib2_1-devel

I had libxcb, libxcb-devel and libxcb-static-devel but apparently they weren’t right.  I also had libcairo-devel and libcairo-static-devel.  I get

–   package ‘xcb-event>=0.3.0′ not found
–   package ‘xcb-aux>=0.3.0′ not found
–   package ‘xcb-atom>=0.3.0′ not found
–   package ‘xcb-keysyms>=0.3.0′ not found
–   package ‘xcb-icccm>=0.3.3′ not found
–   package ‘xcb-image>=0.3.0′ not found
–   package ‘xcb-property>=0.3.0′ not found
–   package ‘cairo-xcb’ not found

I attempted to build xcb from source:

http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/ says to build XCB from source, you need to have installed at least:

• git 1.2
• pkgconfig 0.15.0
• automake 1.7
  • I have automake 1.10.1 (but others are available)
• autoconf 2.50
• libtool 1.5.6
  • I have libtool 1.5.26
• xsltproc (but using libxslt1.1.17 or earlier, or libxslt1.1.20 or newer)
• gperf 3.0.1 (for some of the xcb/util libraries)

I know it’s wrong, but I still attempted to do a”./configure && make && make install” with these:

• http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/xcb-util-0.3.3.tar.bz2
• http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/libpthread-stubs-0.1.tar.bz2
  • (just do ./configure&&make install)
• http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/xcb-proto-1.4.tar.bz2
• http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/libxcb-1.2.tar.bz2

No change.  I am unable to install Awesome.

Re-tried the above four with automake 1.7.9

I have no clue what I’m doing.  The instructions are ass.  Am I really expected to check out unstable stuff from git?  That’s stupid.

Second Try – using Mandriva source RPMs

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/11308629/com/awesome-2.3.5-1mdv2009.1.i586.rpm.html
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/3/srodzaj/2/search/awesome-2.3.5-1mdv2009.1.src.rpm

Additional dependencies for the source rpm:

apt-get install libconfuse0-devel asciidoc xmlto

rpm –rebuild awesome-2.3.5-1mdv2009.1.src.rpm

Fails:
awesome requires libconfuse >= 2.6

Ok, I’ll go find that now.  Since the stuff in the PCLinuxOS repository which I had installed was 2.5, I’ll grab the files from its project.

http://www.nongnu.org/confuse/
http://bzero.se/confuse/
http://bzero.se/confuse/confuse-2.6.tar.gz

retried, fails:

confuse-devel is needed by awesome-2.3.5-1pclos2007.src

But I cannot find this on their site, even with significant searching.  Big fat obvious fail.  So now I guess I have to try to build THAT from source.

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/12313105/com/libconfuse-devel-2.6-5mdv2009.1.i586.rpm.html
ftp://ftp.rhnet.is/pub/Mandrakelinux/devel/cooker/SRPMS/contrib/release/libconfuse-2.6-5mdv2009.1.src.rpm

rpm –rebuild libconfuse-2.6-5mdv2009.1.src.rpm
rpm -i /usr/src/rpm/RPMS/i586/libconfuse0-2.6-5pclos2007.i586.rpm
rpm -i /usr/src/rpm/RPMS/i586/libconfuse-devel-2.6-5pclos2007.i586.rpm
rpm –rebuild awesome-2.3.5-1mdv2009.1.src.rpm

This time it gets further and then dies with:

/usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0: undefined reference to `_xcb_unlock_io’
/usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0: undefined reference to `_xcb_lock_io’
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [awesome] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/rpm/BUILD/awesome-2.3.5′
make: *** [all] Error 2
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.13650 (%build)

RPM build errors:
InstallSourcePackage: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 26752624
user mandrake does not exist – using root
group mandrake does not exist – using root
user mandrake does not exist – using root
group mandrake does not exist – using root
Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.13650 (%build)

Ok, I’ll try awesome 2.3.4
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/9472318/com/awesome-2.3.4-1mdv2009.0.i586.rpm.html
ftp://mirror.switch.ch/pool/3/mirror/mandrake/official/2009.0/SRPMS/contrib/release/awesome-2.3.4-1mdv2009.0.src.rpm
rpm –rebuild awesome-2.3.4-1mdv2009.0.src.rpm

/usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0: undefined reference to `_xcb_unlock_io’
/usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0: undefined reference to `_xcb_lock_io’
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [awesome] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/rpm/BUILD/awesome-2.3.4′
make: *** [all] Error 2
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.82912 (%build)

RPM build errors:
InstallSourcePackage: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 78d019f5
user mandrake does not exist – using root
group mandrake does not exist – using root
user mandrake does not exist – using root
group mandrake does not exist – using root
Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.82912 (%build)

I’m done.

The issue is with the missing confuse-devel.