Osmo Organizer

[Howto] Compile & Install Osmo Organizer

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Osmo is a great little organizer (or as they put it "A Handy Personal Organizer"), with a nifty tabbed display which integrates a Calendar with Tasks, Contacts and Notes in a single app.

Here's a (post-configured) screenshot - default config looks godawful, with HUGE fonts and horrible colours.



Now, Osmo still isn't pre-compiled or distributed in binary format, so if you want to try it out, you'll have to get your hands dirty. Not too much, it's pretty easy.

1.
First things first, so... we have to go and get the source --> here (that's Osmo's sourceforge)

When I wrote this [Howto] latest version was v0.1.6. (updated - 20071224)

2.
Let's open up a terminal, and extract the source with the following command (make sure you cd to the folder to where you downloaded the .tar.gz file)

Code:

tar xvf osmo-0.1.6.tar.gz

And then cd into the created folder with Osmo's source code.

3.
It's time to satisfy the app's dependencies. From reading Osmo's homepage, we know it depends on libxml2 and libgtk2.0 ( version >= 2.10 ). Ubuntu's Gutsy repos satisfy those dependencies, but chances are you won't have the -dev packages installed for compiling. Just to make sure we use the terminal to

Code:

sudo aptitude install libxml2 libxml2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgettext-ruby1.8

That should bring a few extra packages attached, if you didn't have them installed previously. If you can afford an extra 15MB of downloads and around 50MB of HDD space, go ahead and do it. You can always remove both those -dev packages and the extra stuff after compiling Osmo.

N.B.: libgettext-ruby1.8 has been reported by a few people to be a, probably, unexpected dependency. It's happened a few times due to an internationalization dependency regarding package "msgfmt" which is included in libgettext-ruby1.8. So if compilation throws out a "msgfmt" error, be sure to include mentioned package

N.B.2: Version 0.1.6 released the 24th December added iCalendar file support. Both libical and libical-dev are not present in Gutsy's repos, though they are in Hardy's and haven't been backported (at least not to my knowledge). Those two packages are needed to have iCalendar's support enabled, so only Hardy users will be able to take advantage of that specific new feature.

4.
When you have all dependencies lined up, it's a pretty straightforward process.

Code:

./configure

it shouldn't throw around any errors, if all went well until now. And then, to finish it off...

Code:

make && sudo make install

or alternatively you can use checkinstall instead (which will add the app to Synaptic, making it easier to manage/remove later on)

Code:

make && sudo checkinstall -D

(Checkinstall will also upgrade the old installed version, should you decide to compile a newer one)

That way it'll also create a .deb file for you to keep and install on other machines you may have.

Et voilá!

Launch Osmo at the terminal to test it out (just type "osmo" and it'll launch immediately, and create the appropriate launcher for your specific DE. Enjoy your new private virtual secretary.

I'm using it specifically with Claws-Mail and it's only too bad they don't share/synchronize the address book, looks like something I'll be requesting (as well as the ability to copy notes from one day to another). Take a look at the date calculator, it's pretty... handy, as well!