clutter deprecated

Question

I am trying to build Linux Mint's cinnamon DE on Ubuntu 14.04 (rpi2b) but I get this error on the make command, can someone help?

  CC       libst_1_0_la-st-bin.lo st/st-bin.c: In function 'st_bin_set_child':st/st-bin.c:465:7: error: 'clutter_actor_unparent' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/clutter-1.0/clutter/deprecated/clutter-actor.h:58): Use 'clutter_actor_remove_child' instead [-Werror=deprecated-declarations]
   clutter_actor_unparent (old_child);
   ^
st/st-bin.c:475:7: error: 'clutter_actor_set_parent' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/clutter-1.0/clutter/deprecated/clutter-actor.h:54): Use 'clutter_actor_add_child' instead [-Werror=deprecated-declarations]
   clutter_actor_set_parent (child, CLUTTER_ACTOR (bin));

Answer 1

No, but if you are running into problems like this trying to compile/cross-compile a DE I'm sure it will not end there.

You would be much smarter to try and work in Debian's existing armhf cinnamon binaries. The armhf line is ARMv7 and would be the basis of Ubuntu distros for the pi 2 (are you sure cinnamon isn't there already?), so while I can't promise you won't hit a wall with that, I also think it has a very high chance of successful if you go about it the right way, which means:

• Don't just add Debian's repo to sources and gamble on this being too easy. Cinnamon has a lot of parts/dependencies and while it probably doesn't matter in a general theoretical sense which end of the house they get installed from, you are begging to learn out about whatever little nitty-gritty details of incompatibility in configuration, etc., this may lead to.

You are better off tracing the dependency trail down and installing each package manually. This would mean having to learn some things about what .debs are and how to elicit information from and (probably) unpack them without installing to look at the pieces. If that sounds like a PITA and you think there is any route to accomplish this (including, as we see, compiling from source) without having to spend time doing some study and experimentation, you are wrong.

This means you may then end up with weird dependency issues installing other GUI software later, but probably not too much if you leave whatever DE ubuntu came with also installed -- which may waste some few hundred MBs of storage (but this shouldn't be a big deal in many/most contexts, and then it is there as a fallback). Also, if you get sufficiently proficient with the apt/dpkg/package management generally, there are very likely ways around this too. U&L and perhaps Ask Ubuntu will be good resources for this. In any case, you will have the same issue only worse by compiling yourself. All that said, it might not be such a big deal in the end, it is just a potential headache.

You also have the (probably better) option of doing what I've done several times with Fedora on the Pi 2, only using Debian armhf (note that is not what Raspbian is derived from, do not be confused by the "hf"; it is ARMv7). I've had zero problems with that methodology. This means a fresh install, but no matter how you go about this a fresh install is the best place to start from.

Ubuntu actually had its own version of that armhf line (a non-pi specific one) that could be used in the same way, but it looks to me like they've gone all 64-bit ARMv8 (aarch64) now.

In the end, remember: We can't all have what we want just because we want it.