GTK+, and glib (installed by default on most Linux distributions) pilot-link (comes with many distributions)
To compile J-Pilot you need to have GTK+1.2 or later installed. You can find out what version you have by running
gtk-config --version
GTK+ requires glib. The glib version probably should match the gtk version. You can also do a
glib-config --version
You can get these at www.gtk.org
Pilot link must be installed and working. What I mean by working is that you can use pilot-xfer,memos, or some other pilot-link program.
David Silber has some pretty good documentation for using Palm Pilots with Linux at www.orbits.com/Palm/. The pilot-link code can be found at ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS/ If you are installing pilot-link from RPMs make sure that you also have the pilot-link-dev rpm installed for the header files so that J-Pilot can compile.
To compile and install do the following:
./configure make make install jpilot
For Japanese support, use
./configure --with-japanese ./configure --help
will list all the options available.
make uninstall
is also an option, however I do not recommend using this ;)
I have included a spec file so if you want to create your own RPM all you have to do is
rpm -t jpilot-0.96.tar.gz
J-Pilot was written in such a way that it should be very safe to sync. There is always the possibilityof something going wrong though. As with anything else, backup your data if you cannot afford to lose it. Just make sure your backup software doesn't destroy it first.
When syncing, J-Pilot uses the port and speed settings out of the J-Pilot preferences screen. If the port is blank then J-Pilot will use the PILOTPORT environment variables, as does pilot-link. If these are blank also then J-Pilot will default to /dev/pilot. It is recommended, but not necessary to make a link from /dev/pilot to the correct serial port. So, if your cradle is on COM1, this is /dev/ttyS0 under Linux. You could execute the command
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/pilotCOM2 is /dev/ttyS1, and so on.
The Linux serial ports cua[n] are going away. You should use the ttyS[n] ports instead.
You must also give non-root users permissions to access the serial port. The command to do this is (as root)
chmod 666 /dev/ttyS0for the first serial port, ttyS1, for the second, and so on.
Make install will copy a few default color files to /usr/local/share/jpilot/ (unless you told configure to use another prefix).
These will be selectable from the preferences menu. Also J-Pilot will look in $HOME/.jpilot/ for colors files. They must start with "jpilotrc". If you want to add new ones, or modify the current ones, just put the files in one of these directories and they will show up in the preferences menu.
If you create your own cool jpilotrc files feel free to send them back to me and if I like it, I'llinclude it in the release.