How to build Freeplane

From Freeplane - free mind mapping and knowledge management software
Revision as of 15:37, 23 March 2010 by Edgimar (talk | contribs) (add more detailed description of build steps / info on using ant)

To build Freeplane, you must:

  1. Get the source code in one of the following ways:
    • Download the freeplane_src archive from http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeplane/files/ (NOT the freeplane_srcpure archive -- this does not contain the external libraries required for the build.)
    • Check out the source code from the bzr repository (for bzr repository URLs, see below). Do one of the following, depending on whether you prefer a small checkout-directory size, or a repository having full history:
      • bzr checkout --lightweight URL freeplane [no history, directory size ~ 30MB] OR
      • bzr clone URL freeplane [full history, directory size ~ 150MB]
  2. Build the source code, by typing the following commands:
    • cd freeplane/freeplane_framework/ant
    • ant build [see ant section below for more details]

After the code finishes building, it can be found inside the freeplane/freeplane_framework/build directory.

Possible bzr URLs to use include:

  • bzr://freeplane.bzr.sourceforge.net/bzrroot/freeplane/freeplane_program/release_branches/1_0_x
  • ... (TODO: others?)

Further information on the Bazaar repository used by Freeplane is available on the Bazaar howto wiki page.


Using ant

Building Freeplane requires that you have ant installed on your computer. From the ant directory you can run ant TARGET where TARGET is one of the following:

  • build (create directory with binaries in freeplane/freeplane_framework/build)
  • binzip (create binary zipfile in freeplane/freeplane_framework/dist)
  • srczip (create source zipfile in freeplane/freeplane_framework/dist)
  • installer (create windows installer in freeplane/freeplane_framework/dist)
  • portableinstaller (create portable-windows installer in freeplane/freeplane_framework/dist)
  • dmg4mac (create OS X DMG file in freeplane/freeplane_framework/dist)

Specifying no target will end up building all of the above targets.

If you wish to specify a destination build directory, you can do so by adding the build property as a commandline argument to ant:

  • ant -Dbuild=<destination directory> build .