Scripting environment setup

Modern Integrated Development Environments like Eclipse or Idea make it much easier to edit Groovy scripts for Freeplane as in a normal text editor. Syntax highlighting, code completion, error detection, debugging and source navigation are extremely useful especially if you are not that experienced.

But it's more or less difficult for beginners to setup an IDE properly for Groovy scripting, so here's a step-by-step guide. If you have done that you can skip to page Edit scripts in Eclipse.

Installations

• First download and install a Java Development Kit (JDK) -if you don't have it. There is a hyperlink on the Eclipse download page.
• Then download and install a "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" or "Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers" (the latter is more useful for regular Freeplane developers) from Eclipse download page. Read how to unpack here (N.B. for Windows 7 it is not possible to unpack directly into c:/Program Files; no warning is given !)
• Launch Eclipse for the first time and select some directory as your workspace root

• Install the Groovy-Eclipse plugin. (Select at least "Groovy-Eclipse". - "Groovy Eclipse SDK" and "Extra Groovy Compilers" won't hurt.)
• Close Eclipse

Setup workspace

Install freeplane_src

Download the current Freeplane source distribution (e.g. freeplane_src-1.2.13.tar.gz) and unpack it into the selected workspace. Unpacking this archive may require an additional program like 7zip, jzip or winzip on Windows (check by trying to open the file in the Explorer). Unpacking may need two steps:

1. In a program like 7zip open the archive freeplane_src-1.2.13.tar.gz. Most unpackers will allow directly extract into a directory, but jzip creates an intermediate freeplane_src-1.2.13.tar file
2. Rename freeplane-1.2.13 into freeplane_src and make sure this directory is in the workspace.

On the command line (Linux/Unix/Mac):

   cd <workspace> # your selected workspace, like ~/freeplanescripts
   tar -xzvf freeplane_src-1.2.13.tar.gz
   mv freeplane-1.2.13 freeplane_src

Install groovy support

Freeplane's regular script directory <freeplaneuserdir>/scripts will be the script project directory where script development happens. To add special support for Freeplane scripting you have to copy the file freeplane_bin/scripts/freeplane.dsld to the script directory. On the command line (assuming that ~/.freeplane/1.2.x/scripts is Freeplane's script directory; Linux/Unix/Mac):

   cd <workspace> # your selected workspace, like ~/freeplanescripts
   cp ./freeplane_bin/scripts/freeplane.dsld ~/.freeplane/1.2.x/scripts

Create projects

Import the Freeplane project(s)

The Freeplane sources in "freeplane_src" consist of multiple projects, which are prepared for Eclipse. We can simply import this projects into our Eclipse workspace:

1. Select File->Import...

2. Set the root directory to freeplane_src and select all projects except freeplane-ant and (unless this happens on a Mac) freeplane-mac. Then click "Finish".

Create a Groovy project for the scripts

(You may have to click on "Other..." to see "Groovy project" option.)

2. Set the project name to "scripts", uncheck "Use default location" and enter the full path to the freeplane scripts folder (<freeplaneuserdir>/scripts):

3. Connect the scripts with Freeplane.

4. Select a different build output folder. Otherwise a lot of .class files would pollute the scripts directory. This is not required but helpful.

Done. You can proceed now with page Edit scripts in Eclipse.