Comments on: Mendeley Desktop 0.9.6.3 Released

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:20:43 +0000

Hi Jussi,

Thanks for the offer. We made some changes to the ‘generic Linux’ builds since this blog post was written to make it easier to get Mendeley running on Fedora as well as improving system integration. Mendeley >= 1.0 should work ‘out of the box’ on recent versions of Fedora.

The issue with adding new types of package is not so much getting the package built in the first place but maintaining it – making sure that each package has had some basic testing and that it is updated along with the Windows, Linux and Mac versions on each release. Unlike most software that comes with Ubuntu or Fedora, we want users to be able to upgrade to the latest version of Mendeley Desktop without having to update their entire system.

By: Jussi Lehtola

Jussi Lehtola — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:23:35 +0000

Writing a proper spec file for Fedora is quite easy. You don’t even seem to be using anything else than the QT libraries.

If you want help in packaging Mendeley, just holler.

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:37:52 +0000

Thanks for the info. I would be willing to attempt a dedicated build or script as you suggested if you have any further tips on that. I have no problem building/testing on my own time, and I run Ubuntu, Fedora, and Gentoo on different pcs, and frequently test out other distributions. I just happen to run openSUSE on my laptop for particular reasons and that is the pc I do most of my academic stuff on. Anyhow, thanks for providing a great app, I have introduced it to quite a few people, there is definitely a demand for the features it provides. I hate to sound cliche but it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I saw the ad on facebook after spending countless hours testing various apps on windows and linux to organize my chaotic collection of files. Keep up the great work, I certainly appreciate it. No big deal with openSUSE, I realize linux is evolving and expanding so quickly just keeping tabs on what is changing, much less actually kicking the tires would take up more time than anyone has. I would pick most linux distros over windows any day, and the diversity is wonderful, but for years the package management has been the only thing that bothers me.

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:31:37 +0000

Hello Gregor,

Which Linux distribution are you referring to? As I said above, though we only do dedicated builds for Ubuntu/Debian, the ‘generic’ Linux version should work on most modern distributions. We are aware of problems on Fedora (which can be worked around, but we’ll look into making it easier to get it running out of the box).

If you need to get data from Mendeley onto a system which is not supported, you can do that via Bibtex/RIS export (provided you have another system that is able to run Mendeley available) or if you’re comfortable with SQL, from the local database itself.

By: Gregor

Gregor — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:22:01 +0000

Hey, good to know you have no interest in supporting the second most popular linux distro! Should have known better than to rely on closed software, now all my work for the last six months is basically gone. Awesome.

By: Robert Knight

Robert Knight — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:26:38 +0000

Hi Carl,

We don’t have Fedora/openSUSE packages at the moment. We had a brief look at it a while back but because of the effort involved in sorting out dependencies and testing that the builds actually work, we decided we could not justify the time required. Instead we decided to do dedicated builds for Ubuntu/Debian and provide generic Linux builds as an alternative to cover the long tail of other distributions.

I think for Fedora and openSUSE rather than doing dedicated builds it would be better to write a script to take the generic version and package it as an RPM, or perhaps take a look at existing tools like zeroinstall.

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:53:39 +0000

I recall it was previously mentioned that you used openSUSE build service to make the ubuntu and debian packages. Do you also have openSUSE packages? I would be willing to attempt that myself, but if you already use the build service would it be much trouble to add other distributions supported by the build service? I realize with dependencies etc it may not be as simple as just marking another checkbox in the build service.
Thanks,
Carl

By: OXO

OXO — Fri, 07 May 2010 07:04:20 +0000

I have a quite a big problem with this release [0.9.3 on xp sp3 x86]. I cannot access google scholar via the ”search by title” button regardless of the paper I want to edit.
No, I don’t have a captcha to deal with when going to google scholar via my browser.

Retrieving from Arxiv is fine and tremendously quick , ouch !

Anyway the google thing sucks a lot….