Often the hardest part for budding new developers is how to start. So here are a few notes I made on how to start changing code in budgie-desktop itself.
Make sure your package management system is up-to-date and install the dev scripts
sudo apt update
sudo apt install devscripts
now run to enable the source code files from the repo:
software-properties-gtk
Click on the “Source code” checkbox
Click Close, Reload
Install all the development package dependencies:
sudo apt build-dep budgie-desktop
To get the current package source code (no need for root access from now on):
apt-get source budgie-desktop
cd budgie*
To compile first setup your build environment:
mkdir build
cd build
meson --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib -Dwith-gnome-screensaver=true
ninja -v
To install, make sure you are in the build folder you created previously:
sudo ninja install
Make changes in the .vala files, then recompile in the build folder (hint use two tilix windows - one for building, one for editing code:
ninja
If there are no compilation issues, install the compiled code:
sudo ninja install
After installation, you can use:
budgie-panel --replace &
or
budgie-wm --replace &
to restart the panel or window manager and see your glorious new code take effect (depending if you are changing in the panel or window-manager)