How to make a single plugin and install it.

[Charlie Brej]

Jonathan Greig wrote:
> I have plymouth source from git and have already done autoconf automake 
> ./configure make on fedora 10. It builds everything and the .so files 
> are generated. I have been using the spinfinity plugin as a test. I 
> modified 1 line in the animation function so that the spinny throbber 
> image should appear at 1/4 screen width rather than center(a simple test 
> to start with).
> 
> line 206 in spinfinity plugin.c
> [code]
> area.width / 4.0 - width / 2.0,
> [/code]
> 
> When I:
> 1) copy the spinfinity.so file that was generated in the .libs directory 
> to /usr/lib64/plymouth
> 2) copy the spinfinity folder to /usr/share/plymouth/spinfinity
> 3) /usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-plugin spinfinity
> 4) /usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd
> 
> it does not work. I get the fallback to the white-blue progressbar. What 
> is the proper way to install a plugin? I know there isn't any 
> documentation on plugins yet, but I might be able to help somewhat if I 
> could even test some of my own code.

Try getting a fresh git checkout and run:
# ./autogen.sh
# configure --prefix=/usr/ --enable-maintainer-mode
# make
# make install

The plugins in git are incompatible with the server in F10. You need to install 
the full package. Generally "make install" takes care of installing into the 
correct directory so there is no need to manually copy files.

The reason it drops to the text mode blue bar plugin is because that is the 
backup plugin for when the default plugin fails (which in this case it has).

If you want to test the plugin without having to restart the machine, drop to 
text console (init 3) and run:

plymouthd ; plymouth --show-splash; sleep 10; plymouth --quit

Be careful as if you dont have the quit in the line you may end up having to ssh 
to the machine to kill it.

 > Also, I am familiar with usplash. Is it possible to make a plugin from a
 > single makefile in a plugin directory somewhere else on my harddrive
 > rather than having to make the whole source? I can barely understand
 > Makefiles as is but all this automake .in .am stuff just further adds to
 > the confusion.

Yes you can but you will need to do the "automake .in .am stuff" to make it 
work. Easiest thing to do is to work from the checkout you have and edit one of 
the plugins (like you're already doing) and "make install" from that directory. 
It will make and install only that splash without compiling anything else.