Tuesday, August 25, 2009

How to install Alchemy in Ubuntu

Update:
Alan is right.. a parameter is missing in the code so I updated the code in the post accordingly..
I added a "-C" between the file name and directory.

As I read through the article about the flow of David Revoy's work, I came across a comment by him about where to get the programs he used in his painting time-lapse. One of them was Alchemy.

I searched through the net if there is a deb package of Alchemy, but to no avail. So I decided to install it the right way, as if it was installed as deb package.

Here is how:

1. Download the tar.gz file from here.
2. We will extract Alchemy and puts its directory in "/usr/local/bin/". You can choose another destination, but I always choose this for my tar.gz extractions:
In the terminal:
sudo tar zxf Alchemy-007.2.tar.gz /usr/local/bin/
sudo tar zxf Alchemy-007.2.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/
3. Now we want to check our program if it working correctly or not.
In the terminal:
bash /usr/local/bin/Alchemy/Alchemy
If it didn't work, make sure you have Java installed.
4. Now we need to put an entry in the Ubuntu menu:
- Right click on the menu bar and click on Edit menus.
- Choose the Graphics category, then click on New Item button.
- In the Name field type Alchemy, and in the Command field type bash bash /usr/local/bin/Alchemy/Alchemy and then press OK.
5. Click on Close.

By this, we installed Alchemy now.. enjoy..

Optional step: How to add the icon of Alchemy to the menu entry:
I extract the Alchemy.jar file away from the directory /usr/lcoal/bin/Alchemy just to get an icon for the program. Just in terminal after the extraction:
sudo mv /org/alchemy/data/alchemy-logo64.png /usr/local/bin/Alchemy
and then in the menu entry icon guide it to the location of the program and press Enter and you'll find the icon.