Minix is UNIX-like operating system and was inspiration for Linux kernel. It is intended to be run on resource limited computers (like embedded devices) or for applications requiring high reliability.

This tutorial shows how to install and configure latest EDE version on Minix. For this tutorial it is assumed Minix greater than 3.2.1. version or any recent development snapshot. Also, be aware how these are generic installation instructions and for system tuning or advanced configuration, please contact Minix community.

If you are going to install Minix on VirtualBox, either avoid Minix 3.2.0 and 3.2.1 versions or try to use development snapshot; there is a bug in these versions and you will not be able to start X11.

In case you have already configured OS (e.g. installed xorg and C++ compiler, skip the following section).

Assuming you are running as root, first update package database and install X11. Minix comes by default with Clang and FLTK and EDE can be compiled with it, so you don't have to install gcc, unless you have specific reason.

We are also downloading additional tools and libraries, like cURL (to download source archives) and pkg-config (used by build process).

$ pkgin update
$ pkgin install x11 freetype2 fontconfig curl pkg-config

FLTK and EDE can be compiled without Xft support (font antialiasing) minimizing overall library usage; just drop freetype2 and fontconfig from above command.

Minix by default does not have shared library support on versions ⇐ 3.2.1 and this is major issue because ede-panel (desktop panel) loads all widgets/applets from shared libraries (.so files via dlopen).

To enable it, follow these instructions; shared libraries are enabled by default on latest Minix development snapshots or versions > 3.2.1.

Minix use pkgsrc for downloading and compiling packages from source code so this is the best place to compile DBus. Stock DBus (official release) can't be compiled on Minix, so you have to use patched version available only in pkgsrc.

Because DBus is a big obstacle on Minix (depends on lot external libraries pkgsrc will pull), EDE and edelib can be compiled without DBus support. However, this feature is recently added in EDE and is available for now only on repository. To compile EDE and edelib without DBus, just add –disable-dbus flag to edelib configure script, like:

$ ./configure --disable-dbus

edelib will be compiled without DBus and EDE code will automatically pick this change.

FLTK also can be compiled from pkgsrc, but for purpose of this tutorial we will compile it from source code. These commands will do it:

$ curl -O http://ftp.easysw.com/pub/fltk/1.3.2/fltk-1.3.2-source.tar.gz
$ tar -xpvf fltk-1.3.1-source.tar.gz
$ cd fltk-1.3.1
$ export LIBS="-lXrender -lfreetype -lexpat"
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/pkg --x-includes=/usr/pkg/X11R6/include --x-libraries=/usr/pkg/X11R6/lib

If you are using Clang, instead of gcc, open makeinclude file in FLTK source directory, find CXX variable and change it, so instead

CXX = g++

it have:

CXX = clang++

This is a bug inside Minix autoconf package.

Now run:

$ make && make install

You don't have to use exact FLTK version, but make sure to use one of 1.3.x versions.