Running BleachBit from Source Code – Developer Setup Guide

Running BleachBit from source code is intended for developers and testers: other users should install the prepared packages. Running BleachBit from source code is relatively easy because there is nothing to compile and installing BleachBit is not required.

Linux

Linux systems often have the necessary dependencies installed for running BleachBit from source code.

On Debian and Ubuntu, install these packages: gir1.2-gtk-3.0, libgtk-3-0, and python3-gi. On Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat, install gtk3, python3-chardet, and python3-gobject.

Microsoft Windows

Official release environment

On Microsoft Windows to replicate the environment used for publishing official releases, install the special 32-bit build of Python, PyGObject, and GTK. Like vanilla Python, the special build uses the MSVC compiler. It is built using the vcpkg package manager.

Follow the installation steps in appveyor.yml, which installs a prebuilt environment from pygtkwin. (You do not need to build it yourself.)

Vanilla 64-bit Python

One way to get 64-bit support is with vanilla 64-bit Python. This method is easy but experimental and CLI-only: there is no GUI.

Do this setup once:

  1. Download the latest Python Windows installer (64-bit).
  2. Run the installer. Under Optional Features, enable for all users. (If you like, disable tcl/tk and IDLE.)
  3. Click Next.
  4. Customize the install location to c:\python313 (for version 3.13.x), and finish the Python installation.
  5. Download BleachBit source from the main repository (zip).
  6. Unpack the BleachBit source, like to c:\projects\bleachbit.
  7. Change directory: cd /d c:\projects\bleachbit
  8. Create venv: c:\python313\python.exe -m venv c:\projects\bleachbit\venv
  9. Activate venv. If in cmd.exe, run: call c:\projects\bleachbit\venv\scripts\activate.bat
  10. Set up the venv: pip install -r windows\requirements.txt
  11. Run BleachBit CLI using python.exe bleachbit.py instead of bleachbit.exe.

The next time, just activate the venv and run the application (via python.exe).

MSYS2

Another experimental method for 64-bit support on Windows is with MSYS2. See the guide by LagunaJim. This supports the GUI.

Getting the source code

To get the source code, either download the latest tarball (.tar.bz2) or checkout the Git source repository from Git, which always contains the latest code.

Tarball

On Linux unpack a tarball run these commands:

tar xvjf bleachbit-5.0.2.tar.bz2
cd bleachbit-5.0.2

On Windows unpack the tarball with 7-Zip or similar application.

Git

On Linux, install the Git client. On Debian and Ubuntu install it with this command:

sudo apt-get install git

Similarly, on Fedora, Red Hat, and CentOS install the Git client with this command:

sudo yum install git-core

On Linux clone the Git repository for the BleachBit application with this command:

git clone https://github.com/bleachbit/bleachbit.git

Here is a full list of BleachBit Git repositories:

Building translations

If English is not your native language, you must build the translations. On Linux, run:

make -C po local

Building translations is not supported on Windows, but you can copy the translations from another system or download them from Launchpad. Relative to bleachbit.py put the bleachbit.mo file in a directory called .\locale\es\LC_MESSAGES\ (change es according to the language.)

Running from source

Now that the dependencies are installed, you are ready to run BleachBit. On Linux with BleachBit 3.x, run python bleachbit.py. On Linux with BleachBit 4.x, run python3 bleachbit.py.

On Windows, double click on bleachbit.py.

Staying up to date with Git

The Git repository changes frequently. To download changes, run:

git pull --rebase
make -C po local

To see recent changes, run:

git log --oneline --graph --decorate -n 20

To switch to a tagged release, run:

git checkout v5.0.2

To switch back to the master branch, run:

git checkout master

Further reading