Last week I wrote a post on installing GlobalMenu (nee MacMenu) and I said you had to install Vala, which had to be installed from source code. This morning I saw ayoli’s comment and it sent me hunting through Launchpad for a PPA that held Vala 0.5.1. After finding several PPA’s with older versions I found the one that had the current version.
Before we install Vala from Bruce Cowan’s PPA we need to uninstall our current build of Vala. You’ll need to restart your computer during the change so either bookmark this post or print it out so you can refer to it after you restart. Since GlobalMenu depends on it let’s shut down the GlobalMenu first. Go into your home directory and open ~/.gnomerc again in your favorite text editor and comment out all of the lines that you had uncommented to run GlobalMenu. Save the changes and close your text editor, then open a Terminal (or your favorite command line app). Change to the folder where you installed Vala and let’s run the uninstall command.
cd vala-0.5.1
sudo make uninstall
Enter your root password when asked and you will see a rather long list of remove file operations. One that’s done you’ll need to reboot to apply the changes, but before you do right click on your Global Menu Panel Applet and remove it, then add either the Main Menu or the Menu Bar to your panel. This will give you the main application menus to use after you restart your computer. Now close any application you’re running (including your web browser) and restart your system to apply the changes we made. I’ll see you when you get back.
/me fires up Sonata and plays a little Fragile while he waits for you to get back
Welcome back.
Let’s get Bruce’s PPA added to your sources.list file.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bruce89/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bruce89/ubuntu intrepid main
Updated 2 June: Vadi’s comment reminded me that there’s a better PPA for Vala, namely the one for the Vala Team. Use these sources in your sources.list for the latest builds of Vala:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/vala-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/vala-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Update your package list (sudo apt-get update) and install Vala by running
sudo apt-get install valac
I know that look weird but you want Vala, a “C# like language for the GObject system” (from Bruce’s PPA page), if you want to run the current version of GlobalMenu. I’m running GlobalMenu as I type this so I can confirm that valac is the package that you need from Bruce’s PPA.
Go back to ~/.gnomerc and edit the file to the setting you used the last time you ran GlobalMenu. You can either replace your Global Menu Panel Applet now or when you get back, but it’s time for yet another reboot.
/me enjoys a little Mood for a Day while you reboot again
If you didn’t put the Global Menu Panel Applet you should put that back on your panel now. The GlobalMenu should be working, showing that the valac package was the right one to install. I’ll be adding these updated instructions to the documentation for Mac4Lin 1.0 so Mac4Lin users will have the compiled instructions in a single handy file.
Thanks to aoli for giving me the idea of finding a PPA that has Vala, and thanks to Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, Chris Squire and Bill Bruford (collectively known in 1971 as Yes) for making such a sweet album to listen to as I blog.
Updated 20 November 2009: Commenting on this post is closed due to its age and use by somment spammers.
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