Cambalache is a RAD tool for Gtk 4 and 3 with a clear MVC design and data model first philosophy. This translates to a wide feature coverage with minimal/none developer intervention for basic support.
To support multiple Gtk versions it renders the workspace out of process using a custom wayland compositor widget based on wlroots.
Cambalache is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (LGPL) as described in the COPYING file.
Tools are distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL) as described in the COPYING.GPL file.
Source code lives on GNOME gitlab here
git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/cambalache.git
- Python 3 - Cambalache is written in Python
- Meson build system
- GTK 3 and 4
- python-gi - Python GTK bindings
- python3-lxml - Python libxml2 bindings
- casilda - Workspace custom compositor
Flathub is the place to get and distribute apps for all of desktop Linux. It is powered by Flatpak, allowing Flathub apps to run on almost any Linux distribution.
Instructions on how to install flatpak can be found here.
You can get the official build here
Use the following to install:
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user flathub ar.xjuan.Cambalache
Use the following commands to install build dependencies:
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://nightly.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user org.gnome.Sdk//master
flatpak install --user org.gnome.Platform//master
Build your bundle with the following commands
flatpak-builder --force-clean --repo=repo build ar.xjuan.Cambalache.json
flatpak build-bundle repo cambalache.flatpak ar.xjuan.Cambalache
flatpak install --user cambalache.flatpak
Or if you have make installed in your host
make install
Will create the flatpak repository, then the bundle and install it
Run as:
flatpak run --user ar.xjuan.Cambalache//master
This is a regular meson package and can be installed the usual way.
# Configure project in _build directory
meson setup --wipe --prefix=~/.local _build .
# Build and install in ~/.local
ninja -C _build install
To run it from .local/ you might need to setup a few env variable depending on your distribution
export PYTHONPATH=~/.local/lib/python3/dist-packages/
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/.local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
export GI_TYPELIB_PATH=~/.local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/girepository-1.0/
cambalache
While docker is not meant for UI applications it is possible to build an image with Cambalache and run it.
Build the image with:
docker build -t cambalache .
On linux you can run it on wayland with:
docker run \
-e XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp \
-e WAYLAND_DISPLAY=$WAYLAND_DISPLAY \
-v $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY:/tmp/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY \
--user=$(id -u):$(id -g) \
cambalache
or on X server with:
xhost +local:
docker run -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix cambalache
NOTE: There is no official support for Docker, please use Flatpak if possible.
Instructions to run in MS Windows are here
NOTE: There is no official support for Windows yet, these instruction should be taken with a grain of salt as they might not work on all Windows versions or be obsolete.
Instructions to run in MacOS are here
NOTE: There is no official support for MacOS yet, these instruction should be taken with a grain of salt as they might not work on all MacOS versions or be obsolete.
To run it without installing use run-dev.sh script, it will automatically compile cambalache under .local directoy and set up all environment variables needed to run the app from the source directory. (Follow manual installation to ensure you have everything needed)
./run-dev.sh
This is meant for Cambalache development only.
If you are interested in contributing you can open an issue here and/or a merge request here
You can hang with us and ask us questions on Matrix at #cambalache:gnome.org
You can financially support Cambalache development on Liberapay or Patreon like all these people did.
- Liberapay is a recurrent donations platform
- Run by a non-profit organization
- Source code is public
- No commission fee
- ~5% payment processing fee
- Patreon is a membership platform for creators
- Run by private company
- No source code available
- ~8% commission fee
- ~8% payment processing fee
This tool is used to generate Cambalache catalogs from Gir files.
A catalog is a XML file with all the necessary data for Cambalache to produce UI files with widgets from a particular library, this includes the different GTypes, with their properties, signals and everything else except the actual object implementations.