Building

You can build FreeMind with Eclipse, an integrated development environment for Java used by many, or without Eclipse.

Guide for building with Eclipse

• Quick guide to compiling Freemind on an XP system using Eclipse.
• Using CVS from within Eclipse.

Another building with Eclipse

Here's what I did to get things working on Eclipse 3.3 with Windows XP:

1. download the source code for whichever version you're interested in (I myself downloaded freemind-src-0.9.0_Beta_13_icon_butterfly.tar.gz )
2. Create a new Java Project in Eclipse
3. Extract the archive you downloaded
4. Open the freemind directory in Windows (it should contain .classpath, .project, build.xml, and a whole bunch of other files and folders)
5. Select all of the files and drag them onto your newly created project, in the Eclipse Package Explorer
6. Select yes when it asks you if you want to overwrite
7. That should do it.

A simple way for a developer of compiling FreeMind is perhaps the following.

1. install Java SDK — standard development kit
2. install Ant — a tool for building code using complicated make files)
3. download FreeMind's source code as published in the Files section
4. unpack the source code package with the extension tar.gz
5. change directory to the one where built.xml file resides — the build file for Ant, similar to make files for the C language
6. type ant in the command shell

Building without Eclipse

You download FreeMind to ~/src/freemind say. Then, you have to compile FreeMind on command line using "ant dist". After that you open a new project with working directory ~/src you should find the following settings:

• The binaries are stored into ~/src/bin/classes.
• You have two source folders.
• All jars you find in ~/src/freemind are added to the project.

Then finish the project settings and there should be no errors in the project. You can run FreeMind starting the class freemind.main.FreeMindStarter.

See also

• CVS