Download the source

Either:

• Download the latest source (version 0.12.20 released 2013-11-05)
• or checkout from the repository (either a tagged version or the current tree)

Then see here if you want to know more about the organisation of the source tree.

Generic Install from source

Since this software uses distutils, installing is simply a matter of running:

python ./setup.py install

From the source tree.

(you will probably need to run this as root to install globally)

Platform specific instructions

• Microsoft Windows (XP onwards)
• Mac OS X (10.5 onwards)
• Debian and Ubuntu
• Fedora
• Gentoo
• FreeBSD
• OpenSolaris
• Java generic client (alpha)

Debugging

Debugging generally requires running the software from the command line to make it easier to relate problems with the program's output.
There are dedicated debugging pages for connection debugging (ie: failure to connect to the server) and session debugging (ie: applications do not start).

Generic list of dependencies

This software relies mainly on PyGTK (user-interface code), pycrypto (cryptography library) and twisted (networking library).
Please see here for more details on the required dependencies, as well as the platform specific information below.
You should also visit the virtual desktop protocols page to install at least some of the underlying protocols (NX, Xpra, SSH display forwarding, VNC, ..)

Uninstall

If you have installed from source using setup.py install, there is no easy way of uninstalling without tracking all the files that were installed, which is a manual process. Sorry about that.
This is not a limitation of Window Switch, but a known bug with distutils.
Binary installations can be removed using your operating system's package manager.

Checkout the latest source

You can checkout the latest source using subversion:

svn co https://winswitch.org/svn/shifter/trunk/

Or even, another release, see below for browsing the repository to find tagged releases.

Browse the repository

You can browse the source using SVN WebDAV or Trac's source browser.

Source Code Layout

The layout and organisation of the source tree is documented here.

Contribute

There are a number of ways you can contribute to the project:

• reporting bugs
• helping out new users
• submit new code to the mailing list or contact us via irc.
  It is your code: no copyright assignments are required, no licensing restrictions.

  (as long as one of your chosen license(s) is compatible with the GPLv3)