~alan-griffiths/miral/fix-miral-qt

Building and using Miral

========================

These instructions assume that you’re using Ubuntu 16.04LTS or later, I’ve not

earlier Ubuntu versions or other distributions.

You’ll need a few development and utility packages installed, along with the

Mir development packages:

    $ sudo apt-get install cmake g++ make bzr python-pil

    $ sudo apt-get install libmirserver-dev libmirclient-dev mirtest-dev

    $ sudo apt-get install mir-graphics-drivers-desktop

(If you’re working on a phone or tablet use mir-graphics-drivers-android in

place of mir-graphics-drivers-desktop.)

With these installed you can checkout and build miral:

    $ bzr branch lp:miral

    $ mkdir miral/build

    $ cd  miral/build

    $ cmake ..

    $ make

This creates libmiral.so in the lib directory and an example shell 

(miral-shell) in the bin directory. This can be run directly:

    $ bin/miral-shell

With the default options this runs in a window on X (which is convenient for

development). To run independently of X you need to grant access to the 

graphics hardware and specify a VT to run in. For example:

    $ sudo bin/miral-shell --vt 4 --arw-file --file $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/mir_socket

The miral-shell example is simple, don’t expect to see a sophisticated launcher

by default. You can start mir apps from the command-line. For example:

    $ bin/miral-run gnome-terminal

That’s right, a lot of standard GTK+ applications will “just work” (the GDK

toolkit has a Mir backend). Any that assume the existence of an X11 and bypass

the toolkit my making X11 protocol calls will have problems though.

To exit from miral-shell press Ctrl-Alt-BkSp.

Running applications on Miral

-----------------------------

Assuming you have a Mir server running, native Mir applications can be started

from the command-line:

    $ sudo apt-get install mir-demos

    $ mir_demo_client_egltriangle

Similarly, GTK+, Qt and SDL applications can be run with the miral-run script:

    $ bin/miral-run gedit

    $ bin/miral-run 7kaa

Configuration options

---------------------

You can list the configuration options for miral-shell with "--help":

    $ bin/miral-shell --help

Most of these options are inherited from Mir. These can be set on the command

line, by environment variables or in a config file. For example, if you want to

start the gnome-terminal when you run miral-shell you can:

Set supply the option on the command line:

    $ bin/miral-shell --startup-apps gnome-terminal

Set the corresponding MIR_SERVER_<option> environment variable:

    $ export MIR_SERVER_STARTUP_APPS=gnome-terminal

    ...

    $ bin/miral-shell

Create a miral-shell config file:

    $ echo startup-apps=gnome-terminal > ~/.config/miral-shell.config

    ...

    $ bin/miral-shell