Gnome Commander is usually available from the nux-dextop (retired!) repository. Until such time as GCMD version 1.10.2 is added (nux IS a volunteer effort) you can build your own rpm file to install or update GCMD on your CentOS 7 machines without installing all of the packages needed to build GCMD from source on each machine. This example assumes a CentOS 7 virtual machine is build to accomplish the task. VMWare Workstation/Player (the free for non-commercial use version) or Virtual Box should work fine. A development physical machine could also be installed or the necessary packages installed on an existing machine. The virtual machine approach just seems cleaner as it can be deleted or archived when the job is done.
Install CentOS 7.6 Development and Creative Workstation from the installation DVD. Select these additional software groups:
After completing the installation, install all current updates and reboot the VM. A few additional packages are needed to build the .rpm package.
Add the CentOS SCl repository which provides the GCC version 8 compiler and then install the necessary packages:
sudo yum install centos-release-scl
sudo yum install devtoolset-8 libgnome-devel libgnomeui-devel
sudo yum install rpmdevtools rpmlint exiv2-devel taglib-devel poppler-devel
If you desire to include the single instance option it is necessary to
add the following package to the machine on which you are compiling the
application: unique-dev (available in the epel repository).
A new option will appear later on under Settings in Gnome Commander:
Multiple instances
[X] Don't start a new instance
On a new installation this option is checked by default. If you are upgrading an existing installation from a .rpm package this option may be unchecked.
The next step is to obtain the Gnome Commander source code. It may be downloaded from the web site with a browser or if you prefer the command line:
wget https://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-commander/1.10/gnome-commander-1.10.2.tar.xz
Extract the gnome-commander.spec file. This may be done with the archive manager in the GUI environment or by the command line
tar -xvf gnome-commander-1.10.2.tar.xz gnome-commander-1.10.2/data/gnome-commander.spec
Edit the .spec file with your favorite editor and locate the line:
Epoch: 2
Change the 2 to 4. Scroll down to a block of lines which begin with “Requires:” and add a new line:
Requires: gnome-icon-theme-legacy >= 3.0
Save the changes. Note: these changes should not be necessary in future versions of GCMD.
The next step is to create the necessary directory structure to build .rpm packages. The is done by executing:
rpmdev-setuptree
Several directories will be created under the use home directory (~/)
rpmbuild
BUILD
BUILDROOT
RPMS
SOURCES
SPECS
SRPMS
Place the source code file (gnome-commander-1.10.2.tar.xz) in SOURCES and the gnome-commander.spec file in SPECS. Change directory to ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/ and issue the following commands:
scl enable devtoolset-8 -- bash
rpmbuild -ba gnome-commander.spec
After considerable processing a message containing “exit 0” should be
displayed. Two shiny new .rpm files will be present in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x64_86/:
gnome-commander-1.10.2-1.el7.x86_64.rpm and
gnome-commander-debuginfo-1.10.2-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
It is necessary to access the epel repository in order to install these packages due to a dependency for the meld package. The epel repository may be disabled afterwards if desired. Install epel on each target machine as follows:
sudo yum install epel-release
The newly created GCMD package can be installed with yum:
sudo yum install gnome-commander-1.10.2-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
If upgrading an existing GCMD installation prior to GCMD 1.10.1 it may be necessary to run the following command to accommodate preference changes in GCMD. Try running the newly installed GCMD from the command line with gnome-commander. If it fails to run and errors are displayed execute:
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas
The new Gnome Commander icon should appear on the menu under “Accessories”.
Please feel free to communicate any questions, concerns or comments about these instructions to the Gnome Commander Mailing lists as described on the home page.
