THE CONTENT OF THIS PAGE HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE
FreeMind Wiki,
AND IS NOT MAINTAINED ANYMORE.
I recently (January 2004) began to use FreeMind at work, and I therefore decided to package it.
It's better explained on their homepage but FreeMind is a kind of Mind Mapping tool, and I like to use it in order to take notes, where I have a lot of information, which I keep in a rather organized/disorganized way (if you understand what I mean).
There is currently an installable debian package freemind_0.7.1-3_all.deb as well as the sources for the package:
As an alternative, you can add the two following lines to your
/etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://eric.lavar.de/comp/linux/freemind/ ./
deb-src http://eric.lavar.de/comp/linux/freemind/ ./
And just use "apt-get install freemind" to install
the package. One small warning: the package will only properly
install if you have Java installed as a Debian-package (e.g.
j2re1.4, Blackdown Java).
A small side note, the creation of the Debian apt-get repository goes as follows:
# dpkg-scansources ./ /dev/null | gzip -9 >
Sources.gz# dpkg-scanpackages ./ /dev/null | gzip -9 >
Packages.gzRelease with a content similar to:
Archive: freemind
Component: contrib
Origin: deb=at=zorglub
Label: freemind
Architecture: all
Description: Freemind sources and binary
There is currently an installable RPM package freemind-0.7.1-6.noarch.rpm, as well as a source package freemind-0.7.1-6.src.rpm.
Those packages have only be tested with SuSE 8.2, I'd be happy to hear about your mileage: if the binary package did install properly, if the source package did build properly, and, if not, what you did to make build/install properly (I could then try to consider it in my package).
The same warning concerning Java needs to be applied: it needs to have been installed as an RPM-package. Here the situation is a bit more complicated because Java comes in two flavours with SuSE 8.2:
BlackdownJava2-JRE does work perfectly
but there isn't a corresponding JDK (only important if you plan to
rebuild from source). It is the recommended solution for simple
users.java2 and java2-jre
(delivered with SuSE 8.2, from Sun) do work well with Freemind, but
the Java plugin doesn't work with Mozilla 1.6 (a compiler problem).
I wouldn't recommend this package.java2 and java2-jre packages, which work
perfectly, thank you, and which I would recommend. (they are also
in version 1.4.2 and the original ones only in version 1.4.1)I have neither Mandrake nor Red-Hat/Fedora on my PC, so I rely on friends' and strangers' help to test and build these packages.
From a friend, I've got the following binary packages:
You need to have j2re already installed, or have
j2sdk plus j2sdk-provides-j2re-1.4.2-2.noarch.rpm.
In both cases, you need to set JAVA_HOME or put
java in the PATH, in order for FreeMind
to work (see the man-page freemind(1) for more
details).
Currently the source package
for SuSE should work if you have ant and the
j2sdk package on your machine (rpm -q ant
and rpm -q j2sdk will tell you). In this case,
download the source package
and try the following:
[1]$ rpmbuild --rebuild freemind-[...].src.rpm
(a file like /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/freemind-[...].noarch.rpm
should have been created. Take care of the output, ignore messages
saying that the user ericl doesn't exist.)
(now as root)
[2]# rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/freemind-[...].noarch.rpm
If the second step as root does fail with a failed dependency on
the j2re package, just download and install the
Java dummy
package with rpm -Uvh
j2sdk-provides-j2re-1.4.2-2.noarch.rpm before you repeat the
second step.
I never used and don't plan to use Gentoo (which is most probably a wonderful distribution, but I've got enough distros running for my pleasure :-) ). Nevertheless anonymous said on some mailing list:
Freemind is setup on portage for gentoo emerge app-misc/freemind bang zap done
So, you know it...
I only have SuSE 8.2 at home and no plans currently to change this state. This means that the RPM packages have not been tested under RedHat, Mandrake, you name it.
The main problem currently occuring is the dependency towards the Java Runtime, as each distribution seems to have its own understanding of how the Java Runtime should be packaged.
So, if you want me to create a better RPM for your distribution, you need to give me some information:
rpm -Uvh freemind...rpm.rpm -qa
| grep -i jrpm
-qi <package-name>). Tell me the name of the package
you've chosen.rpm -q --provides <package-name> and send me as
well the output of this last command.And then I might be able to help you (I will try, which is more than I will do if you don't provide me with information).
Most people seem to think that, because you're relatively knowledgeable, they can tell you that something doesn't work, and you will be able to find out the solution, just like this!
Well, that's not exactly like this: first, I need to understand what the
problem exactly is, and then I can try to solve it, especially if I've already
seen and solved the problem. Think about your mechanic at the garage, if you
give him a call and tell him "my car doesn't start" or "something is wrong
with my car", would you expect him to tell you right away "Oh, yes, that's the
plugs!". Most probably, he will ask to come by.
Well, that's exactly the same here, I can't ask you to come by, but if you
want good help, you'll need to give me good information.
It's easier than you might thought, just do the following steps, that should give us a good start:
xterm or konsole or rxvt.which javajava -versionrpm -qa | grep -i jrpm -q freeminddpkg -l \*j\*dpkg -l freemindenv | grep -i jfreemindfreemind.sh if you didn't install the
RPM or DEB from this page)The result should look somewhat like this (error messages are OK, I like error messages!):
alice@wonderland:~> which java /usr/lib/java/bin/java alice@wonderland:~> java -version java version "1.4.2-rc1" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build Blackdown-1.4.2-rc1) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build Blackdown-1.4.2-rc1, mixed mode) alice@wonderland:~> rpm -qa | grep -i j eject-2.0.13-26 joystick-2002.10.30-38 libjpeg-6.2.0-530 joe-2.9.8-179 jfsutils-1.1.1-25 jpilot-devel-0.99.6-0.pm.1 jpeg-6b-530 jhead-2.0-2 taskjuggler-1.4.2-10 j2sdk-provides-j2re-1.4.2-2 libjasper-1.600.0-75 jpilot-0.99.6-0.pm.1 jakarta-ant-1.5.1-37 java2-1.4.2-0.pm.0 java2-jre-1.4.2-0.pm.0 mjpegtools-1.6.2-1 alice@wonderland:~> rpm -q freemind freemind-0.7.1-6 alice@wonderland:~> env | grep -i j JRE_HOME=/usr/lib/java/jre PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/bin:/usr/games:/opt/gnome2/bin:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/kde3/bin:/usr/lib/java/bin:/opt/gnome/bin JAVA_BINDIR=/usr/lib/java/bin JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/java SDK_HOME=/usr/lib/java JDK_HOME=/usr/lib/java JAVA_ROOT=/usr/lib/java alice@wonderland:~> freemind Looking for user properties: /home/alice/.freemind/user.properties User properties found. Default (System) Look & Feel: javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel [Freemind-Developer-Internal-Warning (do not write a bug report, please)]: Tried to get view without being able to get map module. alice@wonderland:~>
Some known problems and feedback I already got:
ant package delivered seems to
be broken (version is 1.5.2, but my ant version is
1.5.1 and it works). Installing ant (and dependencies)
from the JPackage Project
seems to solve the problem.j2sdk package doesn't "provide" (in the rpm
sense) j2re, though it provides the runtime engine
capability together with the development kit. This would oblige one
to install both j2sdk and j2re
in order to develop and install Java programs with RPM.
That's not really acceptable. Hence, if you have j2sdk
installed, just install j2sdk-provides-j2re-1.4.2-2.noarch.rpm
before installing FreeMind and here you go (The source package is
available as well).JAVA_HOME environment variable in order to set it
correctly (the default in the spec file is static), e.g. with
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04 (actually the
default for non-SuSE systems, /usr/lib/java being the
default for SuSE systems).