How can I install a Gsettings Schema without root privileges?

Question

Hello I'm trying to play a sound in java the code looks like this:

public void playSound(String sound) {
    try {
        InputStream in = new FileInputStream(new File(sound));
        AudioStream audio = new AudioStream(in);
        AudioPlayer.player.start(audio);
    } catch (Exception e) {}
}

I imported sun.audio*; however get an error:

Access restriction: The type 'AudioPlayer' is not API (restriction on required library 'C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\lib\rt.jar')

Solution

You can copy and compile your Gsettings Schemas to a user-writable directory:

$ cp com.companyname.appname ~/schemas/
$ glib-compile-schemas ~/schemas/

The tricky bit is to configure the application to use that particular directory. There are two ways to do this:

• With the GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR environment variable:

  $ GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=~/schemas/ ./example.py
  

• Or using GSettingsSchemaSource and GSettingSchema objects:

  If you have access to the source code of your program, you can modify it to load compiled schemas from any directory. Here's how would do it in Python, although you could do this in any programming language with GObject introspection:

  schema_source = Gio.SettingsSchemaSource.new_from_directory(
      os.path.expanduser("~/schemas"),
      Gio.SettingsSchemaSource.get_default(),
      False,
  )
  schema = schema_source.lookup('com.companyname.appname', False)
  settings = Gio.Settings.new_full(schema, None, None)
  settings.set_boolean('mybool', True)
  

References:

• C API documentation for GSettingsSchema and GSettingsSchemaSource
• Introductory blog post about GSettings in Python

Comments

[Brian]

See also stackoverflow.com/questions/860187/…

[Modus Tollens]

See also stackoverflow.com/a/22032338

[MadProgrammer]

Nit pick: You really don't need the frame, it's just clutter, but having said that, there's no reason to extend from JFrame as you're adding no new functionality to the class and you should be be ensuring that the UI is constructed within the context of the Event Dispatching Thread. See Initial Threads for more details

[Day]

Thank you so much! This works really great, and because of the way it works I can have multiple sounds over lapping each other (like music and sound effects)

[TroniPM]

2016 and this code still works in java 8 (only one that worked for me, btw). PS: ONLY works with .wav extension (do not try to use mp3).

[Pietro Battiston]

Do you also know how to check if a given schema is already installed (and do the above only if it is not)?

[ntc2]

According to these docs you can also add the directory containing the glib-2.0/schemas directory to the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable.

[Dhruv Erry]

This works perfectly. Is there a way to control the volume?