Running a development version of Gramps

The following describes one possible scenario for getting the latest development version of Gramps running:

• install a recent version of Ubuntu (eg. 7.04) or some other linux distribution. Here we will assume Ubuntu and give the install commands (apt-get) for that distribution

(Beyond the scope of this article, but VirtualBox and VMWare provide a great and relatively easy solution to getting an independent and/or clean build environment.)

• install some basic build tools

sudo apt-get install build-essential

• install a text editor if you plan on modifying the Gramps source. You can use Gedit, kate, or dedicated software like sourcenav (sudo apt-get sourcenav), erik4, SPE or even Eclipse with python plugin. Follow the Programming Guidelines.
• create a directory for the Gramps source

cd ~
mkdir gramps
cd gramps

• get the latest copy of GRAMPS

sudo apt-get install subversion
svn co https://gramps.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gramps/trunk

• get ready to build GRAMPS

cd trunk
./autogen.sh

• if you get a failure about gnome-common, install it:

sudo apt-get install gnome-common
./autogen.sh

• if you get a failure about glib-gettext.m4, install it:

sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev
./autogen.sh

• build GRAMPS

make

• run Gramps

python2.5 src/gramps.py

At this point, any time you want to update to the latest version of Gramps, simply run:

cd ~/gramps/trunk
svn update
python2.5 src/gramps.py

It might happen constants have been changed, and you obtain an error on the const.py module. In that case, rerun autogen.sh and the make command.