Joplin - a free and secure notebook application

. . . packaged for the Fedora, Red Hat (IBM), and OpenSUSE families of linux distributions

Joplin is a powerful desktop and mobile application for writing and organizing markdown-formatted documents synced between devices and storeed fully end-to-end encrypted on the local filesystem as well as the cloud. Joplin can manage large numbers of notes and documents organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own favorite text or markdown editor.

Notes can be imported from Evernote, to include all associated resources (images, attachments, etc) and all metadata (geo-location, update time, creation time, etc). Notes can, of course, also be imported from any other markdown source.

Mirroring and redundancy between your devices is achieved by a simple, and optionally encrypted, synchronization with one of the major cloud services including Nextcloud, Dropbox, Onedrive, WebDAV, or your local or network-accessible file system.

More information about Joplin the project can be found at joplinapp.org and at it's GitHub page. I maintain all RPM package development bits here: https://github.com/taw00/joplin-rpm.

I can be messaged at [email protected] or as user t0dd in the Joplin Community Forums.

OS Notes

As of version 2.3.3, the normal build process is breaking due to some bizarre dependency calling python2 in the build tree. Thus far, after many many hours attempting to work around the issue, I have not been successful in mitigating the problem. For the foreseeable future, I will be packaging upstream AppImage binaries until this is resolved.

As of version 2.4.z, I will be moving builds away from EL8 proper and to CentOS Stream only.

TL;DR - I want to install Joplin!

Open up a terminal and copy and paste these commands on the commandline of your Fedora Linux workstation or desktop. Note, I assume you are logged in as a user that has "sudo" rights.

Fedora and RHEL/CentOS users . . .

Prep the repository . . .

sudo dnf install -y dnf-plugins-core distribution-gpg-keys
sudo dnf copr enable taw/joplin

Install Joplin . . .

sudo dnf install -y joplin

OpenSUSE users . . .

Prep the repository . . .

# Repository setup for OpenSUSE Leap 15.2
sudo wget https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/taw/joplin/repo/opensuse-leap-15.2/taw-joplin-opensuse-leap-15.2.repo -O /etc/zypp/repos.d/taw-joplin-opensuse-leap-15.2.repo
sudo zypper refresh

# Repository setup for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
sudo wget https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/taw/joplin/repo/opensuse-tumbleweed/taw-joplin-opensuse-tumbleweed.repo -O /etc/zypp/repos.d/taw-joplin-opensuse-tumbleweed.repo
sudo zypper refresh

Install Joplin . . .

# Install Joplin on OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install joplin

All users . . .

Once installed, find Joplin in your desktop menus or do a normal application search. Then run it. Visit joplinapp.org for documentation and help.

Useful tidbit:

• application state is maintained at ~/.config/Joplin
• all Joplin documents and such are mirror locally at ~/.config/joplin-desktop

What's in this Github repository?

This repository provides and maintains source packages that can be built to run on Fedora Linux 29+ and EL8 (testing-only) on x86_64. Binary (fully functional) application packages based on these source packages are available elsewhere (in the Fedora Project's COPR repositories) (see below) and make Joplin relatively easy to install and maintain.

In order to use this application, you only need to download and install the joplin application (via the COPR repos). It will, by default, only store your notes and documents locally. And unencrypted. It is highly recommended that (a) you secure your notes with encryption, and (b) configure the application to sync to the cloud (Dropbox, Nextcloud, etc).

Why github for this sort of thing?

I build RPM packages for various projects. Constructing and maintaining source RPMs is very much like any other software or documentation effort. That effort for Joplin is maintained with source-control via github. Binaries are provided here. But you don't need to know a whole lot about Fedora's COPR build environment to install and user these RPMs. Just follow the "TL;DR" instructions below to install Joplin.

If you are technically savvy, you can build your own binary packages from the source RPMs provided in this github repository. All src.rpm files (found here in Github) will be signed with my general-purpose GPG key found here: https://keybase.io/toddwarner/key.asc.

Packages delivered via COPR are signed with a GPG key specific to that repository. COPR enablement as shown elsewhere (TL;DR) will install this key appropriately when necessary.

Comments? Suggestions?

Open an issue here, or send me a note via Keybase -- https://keybase.io/toddwarner

The build process for those who are curious

If minor update — e.g., 2.2.6 to 2.2.7

TEST RELEASE

1. Bump the release in joplin.spec, but mark it as a test build.
2. Update the release log in contributed org.joplinapp.joplin.metainfo.xml file. Reference my contribs here.
3. Rebundle and commit the joplin-2.2-contrib.tar.gz to include that updated .metainfo.xml file.
4. Upload .spec to COPR build system TEST repo, and press a button to build for CentOS, Fedora, and OpenSUSE.
5. Resolve any failures.
6. Test drive Joplin test build on my own machine and some select recruited testers.

PRODUCTION RELEASE

7. Passes testing, then I flip the testing bit to off in the .spec file.
8. Upload .spec to COPR build system PRODUCTION repo and build to all those platforms (a reduced set though).
9. Wait for any complaints from the community in case I broke something.

For major releases, e.g., 2.2.7 to 2.3.3, I only add more testing and sometimes hold off spec file revamps for those releases.