NixNote v2.1

Introduction

Nixnote is Evernote desktop client for Linux (can be also build on macOS and Windows).

• Getting started
• Features
• CHANGELOG
• Contributing
• Releases

Travis CI

Project Status

Unfortunately, I as a "maintainer" don't have time for the project anymore.

Anyone who is interested, can fork & continue…

So far I know Nixnote works quite fine for many people... in case there would be some breaks in Evernote API, I'm willing to investigate and fix if I can. Otherwise, I do some "must have" maintenance.

Packages

Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives official repositories

In case you distribution is based on Debian 10 (Buster) or Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco) or later distribution versions, you can install Nixnote 2.1 from official repositories using:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nixnote2 -y

But there maybe newer version in the PPA (see bellow). Note: on older distributions the "nixnote2" may also be available, but you may get the older 2.0 version.

Ubuntu

NixNote PPA - reflects the latest stable release. More information can be found on NixNote PPA wiki page. Installation commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nixnote/nixnote2-stable -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nixnote2 -y

PPA packages are available for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) and newer.

Additionally there is a "development branch PPA" available. The usage is same as for "stable PPA", just replace the name "nixnote2-stable" with "nixnote2-develop". Just please take care, that you don't enable both stable and development PPA. At most times, the "development release" should be OK for daily use.

AppImage

This is suitable to any ~recent linux distribution. Installation is trivial - download AppImage file, mark as executable & run. More information can be found on NixNote AppImage wiki page.

Two builds are available:

• Stable build - it reflects the latest stable release - tip of the master branch - same as the PPA or AUR version.
• Development build - it reflects the latest development release - tip of the develop branch..

Other

I can't provide support for packaging for other distributions that Ubuntu PPA and the AppImage but here are links to further community builds:

Arch Linux

AUR package nixnote2-git builds the latest stable release.

Gentoo Linux

NixNote is available via a custom portage overlay (that lives here). It can be installed by running the following commands:

layman -o https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bbugyi200/portage-overlay/master/repository.xml -f -a bbugyi200
emerge nixnote:2

Fedora

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/nunodias/nixnote2/

OpenSUSE

https://software.opensuse.org/package/nixnote2

Building from source

This app is mainly targeted at Linux, but it should compile quite easily on Windows and also macOS config is already present (see more detailed info bellow). As lot of refactoring has been made and I can't currently try anything else then linux, it is quite probable that minor adjustments are needed for the all non linux builds.

Application is developed using Clion IDE using open source licence from JetBrains.

Linux - docker build

This should work out of the box, no fiddling with any dependencies is needed. The created binary image should work on all ~recent distributions (at least in theory). Basic familiarity with docker is helpful.

More info in: DOCKER README

Linux - manual build

• Install development dependencies - look in content of this docker file of debian/control to see example, what is needed for Ubuntu. If you use another distribution/version, you may need adjust packages.
• Qt: you can either get Qt packages for your distribution or as alternative you can download Qt 5 directly from qt.io/download.
• Get latest source from github...
  • I recommend using master branch.
• Build
• Optional: create AppImage package using linuxdeployqt

./development/build-with-qmake.sh

build-with-qmake.sh is just kind of convenience script. You can also build without it like: qmake CONFIG+=debug PREFIX=appdir/usr, then make && make install.

This suppose, you installed libtidy in system default location (recommended version is 5.6.0).

In case you installed tidy from nixnote (e.g. using package nixnote2-tidy from Nixnote PPA), then the could command could be ./development/build-with-qmake.sh debug noclean /usr/lib/nixnote2/tidy.

If all got OK, you should have "qmake-build-debug/nixnote2" binary available now (and also a deployment copy in appdir). I suggest running from "appdir" (e.g. ./appdir/usr/appdir/nixnote2).

# Optional second step: if all got well you may try to create AppImage package
./development/create-AppImage.sh

Preparation steps

• You can either install the nixnote2-tidy package from NixNote PPA or build yourself from source.
• Alternative 1: Install nixnote from PPA:
  • ..this includes nixnote2-tidy package
  • in this case libtidy is installed in /usr/lib/nixnote2/tidy
• Alternative 2: Build tidy library from source:
  • clone source code switch to master branch
  • follow build instructions
    • short version:
    • cd build/cmake
    • cmake ../.. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
    • make
    • make DESTDIR=/some/directory install
    • library is now copied to /some/directory/lib (/some/directory/lib should be then passed as 3rd argument to build-with-qmake.sh)

If it doesn't work: use docker build - or compare with docker recipe, what is different - e.g. missing dependency package.

macOS

Build from source. Basically same as for linux:

./development/build-with-qmake.sh

build-with-qmake.sh is just kind of convenience script. You can also build without it like: qmake CONFIG+=debug PREFIX=appdir/usr, then make && make install.

Upon successful completion you will have the NixNote2.app bundle in the build directory (e.g. qmake-build-debug/NixNote2.app).

Dependencies can come from MacPorts, Fink or HomeBrew (I use MacPorts). It should be possible to use official Qt5 packages too but I haven't tested that. Tested with following macPorts packages: qt5, qt5-qtwebkit, poppler-qt5, hunspell, boost, tidy.

The resulting application still depends MacPorts (or Fink or HomeBrew). To turn this into a standalone app bundle that can be deployed anywhere:

> cd build
> macdeployqt NixNote2.app [-no-strip]

As far as I can tell this will find and copy all required dependencies into the app bundle and modify them so they can be loaded from inside that bundle (wherever it ends up).

Windows

Build with MinGW32 for a 32-bit Nixnote2 (if you want a 64-bit one, you need to use MinGW-w64 or MSVC):

Unlike Unix-like systems, Windows is not shipped with a bash environment, so you need to install one first.

Download development dependencies:

Download the third-party libraries:

If you want to download binary third-party library files, you can get them from winlib. Inside it, Hunspell and tidy are built with MinGW 32 5.3.0, and poppler is downloaded from sourceforge as binary. If you want to build by yourself, you can download them from the following links:

poppler

tidy

hunspell

Download Qt:

Qt(with MinGW32)

If your Qt version is 5.6 or higher, you need to download QtWebKit separately and copy the files under QtWebKit include folder to /your_path_to_qt/[version]/mingw[version]/include.

QtWebKit

(Advice: You may want to add the path to qmake.exe and ming32-make.exe to the PATH environment, so that you do not have to type the full path when building the application and libraries later. You can do this by hand or running qtenv2.bat.)

Build third-party libraries:

If you need to build tidy-html5 by yourself, its README file may help. The poppler link points to the binary files, you can use it directly.

About hunspell, as its README instructs us to use MSYS2 and Cygwin, which may be in x64, so to get compatible libraries, you have to set gcc and g++ as the one you used previously for tidy under MSYS2 or Cygwin(by alias or export command) and build like this:

MSYS2/Cygwin # autoreconf -vfi
MSYS2/Cygwin # ./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32 --host=i686-pc-mingw32 --target=i686-pc-mingw32
MSYS2/Cygwin # mingw32-make.exe

Then you will get the hunspell dll file.

Then, create folders as winlib/includes in this repository folder and copy the files under poppler, tidy and hunspell include folders to winlib/includes. The structure is:

nixnote_repo
|
`--winlib
   |
   includes
   |
   `--poppler
   |  |
   |  `--qt5
   |  |  |
   |  |  `...
   |  `--cpp
   |     |
   |     `...
   `--tidy
   |  |
   |  `--tidyplatform.h
   |  |
   |  `--tidyenum.h
   |  |
   |  ...
   |
   `--hunspell
      |
      `--affentry.hxx
      |
      ...

And also copy the dll files libtidy.dll, libpoppler.dll, libpoppler-qt5.dll, libhunspell-1.7-0.dll to winlib.

Build the application:

qmake.exe -set HUNSPELL_VERSION 1.7-0(you can change the version as needed)
qmake.exe CONFIG+=debug[/release] nixnote2.pro
qmake.exe -unset HUNSPELL_VERSION
mingw32-make.exe
strip.exe qmake-build-debug/[release]/nixnote2.exe

Finally, you will get qmake-build-debug[/release]/nixnote2.exe.

Deployment:

First, copy the nixnote2.exe to the deployment_folder, then execute the following commands:

windeployqt.exe --compiler-runtime --libdir [deployment_folder] [deployment_folder]
bash /development/deploy-on-windows.sh [deployment_folder]

If you need spell check, you have to download the dictionary files and copy the .aff and .dic file to the deployment folder. You may want to download them here.

Donations

If you would like to support the project, you can send me some little amount via paypal: https://paypal.me/nixnote2