Evidence

What you'll want to download

You may...

Get the latest developers' version from CVS,
get a source distribution,
or get ready-to-go binaries as RPMs or Debs.

For now, evidence needs GTK2. We intend to have evidence build against EWL (enlightenment widget library) alternatively as becomes available.

Getting evidence from CVS

The CVS stores the version the developers work on. The version in CVS will contain the latest and greatest features, but also the latest mistakes. Use at your discretion.

To get the latest version, first log into CVS using cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/evidence login -- just press Enter or Return when it asks for a password. Then enter cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/evidence co evidence to download ("check out" in CVS-speak) the actual files. This will take a while, but the cvs program should keep you updated on its progress.

Build the binaries.

Getting a source distribution

Download a source distribution. These sources come as a files ending in .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 -- use tar -zxvf evidence.tar.gz or tar -jxvf evidence.tar.bz2 respectively to unpack the individual files from the "archive" you downloaded.
Build the binaries.

Building evidence

If you got evidence from CVS, run ./autogen.sh --help.
If you got a source-archive of evidence, run ./configure --help.
In either case, a plethora of options should be listed.

Decide on a backend to use.
Decide whether you want an icon-view or a shelf. If you do, decide which canvas to use.
Decide on whether you want meta-data providers.
Run ./configure with the options of your choice. Then, run make and one of make install or checkinstall -- the latter is preferable, but not all people have it. (evidence will not work until installed; trying src/evidence will not render the desired results.)
Run evidence. Type rehash first to tell your shell that there is a new kid on the block. If your shell does not understand the rehash command, open a new one.
Customize, if you wish.

Getting a binary distribution

Get a binary package (RPM, Deb, ...).
Install the package (dpkg -i evidence.deb, rpm -i evidence.deb, ...).
Run evidence. Type rehash first to tell your shell that there is a new kid on the block. If your shell does not understand the rehash command, open a new one.
Decide on whether you want meta-data providers.
Customize evidence, if you wish.

Meta-data providers

Providers a small plugins that are specialists for a certain type of file. The MP3/ID3 provider for instance knows how to read MP3 tags. It enables evidence to show information such as song title, artist's name, release-date and more even if they are not part of the file's name. This information will be displayed in tooltips and in the file-info dialog together with the usual data (file's size, its owner, date of last modification, ...).
Most plugins also allow some of the data to be edited; in the case of the MP3/ID3 plugin, you may edit your MP3 tags in the file-info dialog!
Plugins are not part of the main program; this way, you may easily add plugins without having to rebuild the whole program. evidence will only load the plugins as it needs them; if you have no MP3s for instance, the MP3/ID3 plugin will not be loaded.
Most plugins rely on other code ("libraries") that need to install before you can build that plugin:

Plugin Needs

Ogg Vorbis-tag libvorbis, libvorbisfile, libogg

MP3-tag (ID3) libid3 (3.8+)

image imlib2 (highly recommended for thumbnailer anyway)

Plugin	Needs
Ogg Vorbis-tag	libvorbis, libvorbisfile, libogg
MP3-tag (ID3)	libid3 (3.8+)
image	imlib2 (highly recommended for thumbnailer anyway)

Evidence backends

The backend tells evidence about the files on your system. There are a several backends to choose from; for instance, if you are using KDE, the KDE-backend will let evidence use the awesome power of kioslaves. The GNOME-VFS backend does similar things for GNOME-users, the efsd-backend for enlightenment 17 users. If in doubt, use the default "file" backend which does not rely on a specific Desktop Environment and will run anywhere.

Canvas

The canvas is what evidence puts the icons of the icon-view and the shelf on. You may use GNOME-canvas, or the enlightenment canvas, evas. GNOME-canvas should part of your distribution of GNU/Linux and may well be on your system already. evas means more stuff to download, but it also means having a much fancier icon-view in the end.

Library	Used for...
freetype	needed by evas. required.
imlib2	fancy thumbnails. without imlib2, you will only get thumbnails (image previews) for PNG and JPG format images; with it, for about a dozen others, as well as previews for TrueType fonts. some theme-plugins such as the text-path also use imlib2 for fancier looks (but may usually be built to less effect without imlib2). highly recommened.
ebg	enlightened background. ebony-created enlightenment 17 backgrounds use this. backgrounds are store in edb-files, so if want ebg, you'll edb as well. recommended.
edb	enlightened data-base. ebony-created enlightenment 17 backgrounds and legacy e17 scrollbars come in this format. recommended; required when using edb.
eet	enlightened compressed archive. now, one more format to thumbnail. will become more important in the future. optional.

Customizing evidence

If you built evidence with shelf and icon-view (or download evidence), you may use a ready-made icon-set of your choice. To build your own iconset, make new folder under /usr/local/share/evidence/icons, copy the desired icons into that folder, and create a file mime.icons telling evidence which of the icons to use for which MIME-type. See other iconsets for examples for the mime.icons map.

If you built evidence with the evas-canvas, you may use a ready-made theme of your choice, or make your own using one of the shipped ones as example.
Themes tell evidence what fonts, pictures and theme-plugins to use.
Theme-plugins are responsible for loading or creating icons, rubber-bands, scrollbars, and background pictures.
They can do this in any way they like -- but whether you like your icon-view minimalistic or convoluted, you'll only load the plugins you actually use!
If you know the C programming language, you may write your own theme-plugins.

To run evidence with a backend other than the one-size-fits-all default, pass the backend's name on the command-line (see manual). To make it the default backend, simply ln -s /usr/local/lib/evidence/backend/MyFunkyNewBackend.so /usr/local/lib/evidence/backend/fsxs.so -- I'll auto that in the future.