Ubuntu Wiki

Building Unity from Source

You'll need a fully updated Natty system, with the latest compiz and bamfdaemon packages installed.

You'll then need to do do this:

sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libcairo2-dev libpng12-dev libglew1.5-dev  libglewmx1.5-dev libxxf86vm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libpango1.0-dev doxygen cmake build-essential debhelper pkg-config valac intltool libgee-dev libunique-dev libclutter-1.0-dev libclutter-gtk-0.10-dev libclutk-dev libbamf-dev gsettings-desktop-schemas-dev libgconf2-dev  libglib2.0-dev libdbusmenu-glib-dev libgnome-desktop-dev libgtk2.0-dev libpango1.0-dev libgnomeui-dev libdee-dev libindicator-dev  libunity-misc-dev libutouch-grail-dev libxcb-icccm1-dev compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-dev libboost-dev libboost-serialization-dev libmetacity-dev python-dev cython gnome-common 

to get all the dependencies.

You will probably need to grab the latest version of Nux to get Unity trunk going:

bzr branch lp:nux
cd nux
./autogen.sh --disable-documentation --prefix=/opt/unity
make
sudo make install

exporting paths:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/unity/lib/pkgconfig:${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/unity/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export LD_RUN_PATH=/opt/unity/lib:${LD_RUN_PATH}

and then Unity:

bzr branch lp:unity
cd unity
mkdir build; cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCOMPIZ_PLUGIN_INSTALL_TYPE=package -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/unity
make
sudo make install

unsetting paths:

unset PKG_CONFIG_PATH
unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
unset LD_RUN_PATH

add this to your /home/$USER/.bashrc

function compiz-unity-setup-env
{
    export PATH=/opt/unity/bin:${PATH}
    export PYTHONPATH=/opt/unity/lib/python2.7/site-packages
}

and finally, once that's installed, you can log out and log in and again and then run compiz-unity-setup-env and then restart Compiz (compiz --replace) and then use CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm) to search for and enable the Unity plugin!