Compiling jEdit under Ubuntu

Here I’ll show you how to compile the jEdit text editor from source in Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

1. Install the Sun JDK for Java 5.

2. Install the following packages:

   sudo apt-get install ant ant-optional xsltproc \
   docbook docbook-xml docbook-xsl passivetex
   

3. Download Apache FOP and extract it into your system’s temporary directory: /tmp

4. Obtain jEdit’s source code from its SVN repository:

   svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/jedit/jEdit/trunk
   

5. Save the following text to a file named build.properties:

   build.dir=build
   dist.dir=dist
   xsltproc.executable=/usr/bin/xsltproc
   docbook.xsl=/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/
   docbook.catalog=/usr/share/xml/docbook/schema/dtd/4.2/catalog
   fop.dir=/tmp/fop-0.20.5
   

6. Build the distribution from the source code:

   ant dist
   

7. Look inside the dist directory to enjoy the fruit of your labor! :)