Here’s a new howto explaining the steps to compile, install and enable the gnome-globalmenu-0.6 on your desktop.
This has been tested on Ubuntu intrepid ibex but it should work on hardy too. It should also work with other distributions, except for the first step.
Globalmenu works with “real” gtk applications. That means globalmenu will not work with firefox and openoffice.
Another note : globalmenu doesn’t require anymore to patch libgtk, good news 
Big thanks to rainwoodman for his awesome work on this very useful applet.
A new version of this guide is now available here
If you want a deb install way, read DJPeng post here
WARNING : If you use revisions prior to 1532 you will need vala 0.4.0
Firstly, we need to install some dependencies and developper packages to compile and install vala 0.4 and gnome-globalmenu 0.6 :
Non ubuntu distributions only need to find the corresponding deps and dev packages in their distribution repositories.
sudo apt-get install build-essential flex bison gnome-common libglib2.0-dev gtk-doc-tools autoconf2.13 automake1.9 libgtk2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libwnck-dev libpanel-applet2-dev libgnome-menu-dev
Next step, we download, extract, compile and install vala :
cd ~/
wget -c http://download.gnome.org/sources/vala/0.5/vala-0.5.1.tar.bz2
tar xjvf vala-0.5.1.tar.bz2
cd vala-0.5.1/
./configure
make
sudo make install# (for some reason, checkinstall doesn't work here)
sudo ldconfig
Now, we can grab globalmenu source code and compile again :
cd ~/
svn checkout -r 1718 http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gnome-globalmenu-0.6
cd gnome-globalmenu-0.6
Now, we run configure and compilation :
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install# (for some reason, checkinstall doesn't work here)
edit ou create ~/.gnomerc file (also work with ~/.profile file if you prefer) :
gedit ~/.gnomerc
Put the following line in the file, then save :
export GTK_MODULES=globalmenu-gnome
log out gnome, then log in again
Right click on an empty part of your panel, choose “Add to panel” from the popup menu. Scroll down until you see “Global Menu Panel Applet”, select it and click “add” (or drag and drop it on the panel)
And voila
Known bugs and issues :
- Crashes fast-user-switch applet
- Very buggy with eclipse. you can disable eclipse by adding the line export GTK_MENUBAR_NO_MAC=eclipse to your ~/.gnomerc file
- Shortcuts from places menu in default menu (when no window is focused) don’t work.
Support and discussions :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=241868
News
Here’s lviggiani (from ubuntuforums.org) patch that brings new functionalities like the application title, a window selector on click on application menu, and that fixes apparence bugs with some themes.
You can find it here : http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6217707&postcount=2289
Great news : lviggiani is now a globalmenu dev and, all his patches have been merged to trunk. Feel free to update your build and tell us how does it work for you (here, ubuntuforums thread and google code page of the project).
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@lviggiani : seen ! thanks for also posting your new features here
Applet preferences are now available.
Look here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6305166&postcount=2389
@lviggiani : man, you’ve done a great job again !
Woah, I’m truly impressed !! Great job!! Thanks!
@Ayoli: Thank you!!!
@All: an update is available. Look here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6324375&postcount=2407
Ciao!
I want my menus have rounded corners instead of squared. How can I do that??
@truonglq: I guess you could do that with some gtkrc theming and gtk-pixbuf-engine, but I can’t tell you how.
You may ask on gnome-look.org, there are hardcore themers there with a huge knowledge on this topic.
I’ve tried to edit my gtkrc file by adding : roundness=10 (or something like that) but the menus became gray and had no roundness.
Like I said before, I believe you could do that only with gtk-pixbuf-engine and images, but it is not that simple.
There no roundness option or somewhat to do what you want.
I understood.Thanks, though.
hello
so much to read … it’s really nice thank you ayoli.
for rounded menu Murrine engine (from svn ) can do that quite nicely
it was my request few weeks ago about rgba .
voila c’est tout
merci encore
Thank you for the hint and for your nice comment
I was not able to get globalmenu to work on my Ubuntu 8.10 until I followed these instructions. Gr8 work dude…
I tried buiding the latest (2380)< tried a few revisions back as well, but I always get a lot of such errors:
libgnomenu/menubar.vala: yyy.y-zzz.z: Access to private member `Gtk.Widget.xxxxxx’ where xxxx is a function name, and below
_overflown_menubar.xxxxxx() where xxxxxx is the same functioname.
Any ideas?
You may want to try an earlier version of vala.
Checkout http://live.gnome.org/Vala/Release
Let me know if it solve your issue.