GNOME TErminal

Source & Releases

To get the source code, use

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal

To get the source for a release version, use the corresponding git tag, or download a tarball at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal/-/archive/TAG/gnome-terminal-TAG.tar.bz2 replacing TAG with the desired tag's name (e.g. 3.40.0). Older releases are also available at https://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-terminal .

Building from source

You will most likely need to also build vte from source; see https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/blob/master/README.md .

Start by installing the build dependencies, and a C++ compiler.

For fedora and related distributions, use

sudo dnf build-dep vte291 gnome-terminal
sudo dnf install g++

while for debian and related distributions, use

sudo apt-get build-dep libvte-2.91-0 gnome-terminal
sudo apt-get install g++

First build vte according to its own instructions. Then:

$ # Get the source code
$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal
$
$ # Change to the toplevel directory
$ cd gnome-terminal
$
$ # Run the configure script (choose an appropriate path instead of "/some/where"!)
$ # Don't forget to make sure that pkg-config can find your self-build vte!
$ # e.g. by doing:
$ # export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/some/where/lib64/pkg-config:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH
$ #
$ # If you compiled gnome-shell into the same prefix, you can omit disabling
$ # the search provider.
$ #
$ meson _build --prefix=/some/where -Dsearch_provider=false
$
$ # Build
$ ninja -C _build
$
$ # Install
$ ninja -C _build install

• By default, GNOME Terminal will install under /usr/local, which is not usually the right choice. You can customize the prefix directory by --prefix option, e.g. if you want to install GNOME-TERMINAL under ~/foobar, you should run meson _build --prefix=$HOME/foobar. If you already run the configure script before, you should also pass --reconfigure option to it.

• You may need to execute ninja -C _build install as root (i.e. sudo ninja -C _build install) if installing to system directories. Use a user-writable directory as --prefix instead to avoid that.

• Since GNOME Terminal uses a D-Bus activated server, you cannot simply run the self-built gnome-terminal directly. Instead, you need to start the new gnome-terminal-server directly using

$ ./_build/src/gnome-terminal-server --app-id test.Terminal &

and then you have 10s time to open a window in that server using

$ ./_build/src/gnome-terminal --app-id test.Terminal

Also see https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Terminal/Debugging for more information.

Debugging

After installing GNOME-TERMINAL with -Ddebugg=true flag, you can use GNOME_TERMINAL_DEBUG variable to control GNOME-TERMINAL to print out the debug information

$ GNOME_TERMINAL_DEBUG=selection ./_build/src/gnome-terminal-server [...]

# Or, you can mixup with multiple logging level
$ GNOME_TERMINAL_DEBUG=selection,draw,cell ./_build/src/gnome-terminal-server [...]

$ Or, you can use `all` to print out all logging message
$ GNOME_TERMINAL_DEBUG=all ./_build/src/gnome-terminal-server [...]

For logging level information, please refer to enum TerminalDebugFlags.

Contributing

Bugs should be filed here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal/issues/ Please note that this is a bug tracker to be used for developers of GNOME Terminal, and contributors of code, documentation, and translations to GNOME Terminal, and not a support forum.

If you are an end user, always file bugs in your distribution's bug tracker, or use their support forums.

If you want to provide a patch, please attach them to an issue in GNOME GitLab, in the format output by the git format-patch command.