Building

See detail in Quick guide to compiling Freemind on an XP system using Eclipse. (This didn't work for me, see below instead)

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