UMLet install

Previous: Freemind install

I found a useful UML modeling tool that's suitable for agile modeling, called UMLet. I wrote my opinions about it on my Effective Software Development blog, and I won't repeat them here. This entry is just about how I installed it on Ubuntu Linux.

First I downloaded the archive from the UMLet site at http://www.umlet.com. I unzipped the archive for the standalone version of UMLet into /home/umlet.

To make it easier to start UMLet, I defined an alias in .bash_aliases as follows:

alias umlet='java -jar ~/umlet/UMLet/umlet.jar'

Then I created a desktop file for UMLet and saved it in /usr/share/applications as umlet.desktop. The contents are:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=UMLet
Comment=UML diagramming tool
Exec=umlet
Icon=uml_icon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
StartupNotify=true

The desktop definition makes UMLet appear in the Applications -> Programming menu in the Gnome desktop. The icon file referenced in the desktop file is just an icon I found on the net somewhere that reminds me of UML. UMLet doesn't have its own icon.

Next: Another reason to like Ubuntu