FriendsMap

Geographic Friend Map

This extension for RetroShare shows your friends on a map or globe.

This product uses GeoLite data created by MaxMind.

Features

• Shows your friends on an interactive globe or flat map (based on Marble)
• Locates friends by their public IPv4 address using a GeoIP City database
• Every location (node) of a friend is shown with its name
• Online friends are drawn in green, offline friends in red
• Optional friend avatars on the map
• Optional links between friends who know each other (from RetroShare discovery)
• Three projections: Spherical (globe), Equirectangular and Mercator
• Several map themes: Blue Marble, OpenStreetMap, City Lights, Schagen 1689 and Plain, or any other Marble theme
• Optional map layers: grid, borders, cities, ice, clouds, city lights and sun shading (day/night)
• Settings apply immediately and are saved
• Optional standalone window: the map only opens on request and uses no resources while closed
• Finds Marble and the GeoIP data automatically; paths can also be set by hand

Qt version: the plugin, RetroShare and Marble must all use the same Qt major version. A Qt 5 RetroShare cannot load a Qt 6 Marble, and the other way round.

Qt	Marble	Library linked
Qt 6	current Marble (KDE Gear 24.02 and later)	libmarblewidget-qt6
Qt 5	Marble release/23.08 (last Qt 5 series)	libmarblewidget-qt5

FriendMap.pro picks the right library automatically from the Qt version of the qmake you run.

Build the main RetroShare project before building this plugin.

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Linux (Debian / Ubuntu) — Qt 6

Dependencies

sudo apt-get install qt6-base-dev qt6-svg-dev libmarble-dev libgeoip-dev

Recent distributions (Debian 13, Ubuntu 25.04 and later) ship Marble built with Qt 6 (libmarblewidget-qt6). Check with:

ls /usr/lib/*/libmarblewidget-qt*

If your distribution only has libmarblewidget-qt5, build RetroShare and the plugin with Qt 5 instead (use qmake / qmake-qt5 in the steps below).

To build Marble with Qt 6 from source instead:

git clone https://invent.kde.org/education/marble.git
cd marble && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
  -DBUILD_MARBLE_APPS=OFF -DBUILD_MARBLE_TESTS=OFF -DBUILD_MARBLE_EXAMPLES=OFF
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Get the source

cd RetroShare/plugins/
git clone https://github.com/RetroShare/FriendsMap.git FriendsMap

Build

RetroShare itself must also be built with Qt 6.

cd FriendsMap
qmake6
make clean
make

Install

cp libFriendMap.so.1.0.0 ~/.retroshare/extensions/libFriendMap.so

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Windows (MSYS2 MinGW64)

The steps below use Qt 5. For Qt 6, see Windows with Qt 6 at the end of this section.

All commands below are run in the MSYS2 MINGW64 shell.

Folder layout

FriendMap.pro expects GeoIP and Marble to sit next to the RetroShare checkout:

GitHub/
├── RetroShare/
│   └── plugins/FriendsMap/
├── geoip-api-c/
└── marble/
    ├── build/
    └── install/        <- created by "make install"

Dependencies

pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-extra-cmake-modules \
                   mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5-base mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5-svg \
                   mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5-tools mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5-declarative

libGeoIP

Only the source files are needed — the plugin compiles GeoIP.c, GeoIPCity.c and GeoIP_deprecated.c directly, so there is no need to build the library.

cd /c/Users/<you>/Documents/GitHub
git clone https://github.com/maxmind/geoip-api-c.git

Marble (Qt 5)

cd /c/Users/<you>/Documents/GitHub
git -c core.autocrlf=false clone --branch release/23.08 --depth 1 \
    https://invent.kde.org/education/marble.git marble
cd marble

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles" \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DQT_MAJOR_VERSION=5 \
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/c/Users/<you>/Documents/GitHub/marble/install \
  -DCMAKE_DISABLE_FIND_PACKAGE_Protobuf=TRUE \
  -DBUILD_MARBLE_APPS=OFF -DBUILD_MARBLE_TESTS=OFF -DBUILD_MARBLE_EXAMPLES=OFF
make -j8
make install

Notes:

• Check the CMake output says it found Qt5. If it picks Qt 6, delete build/ and try again.
• If you already have a Marble checkout on master, switching with git checkout release/23.08 can fail with "Your local changes ... would be overwritten" (usually only line endings). Simplest fix: delete the marble folder and clone again with the command above.
• If a configure step failed, remove build/CMakeCache.txt and build/CMakeFiles before running cmake again.
• -DCMAKE_DISABLE_FIND_PACKAGE_Protobuf=TRUE builds Marble's OSM plugin without .osm.pbf support (FriendsMap does not need it). Marble 23.08 does not link with the current MSYS2 protobuf; without this option the build stops with *"undefined reference to __emutls_v._ZN6google8protobuf8internal15ThreadSafeArena13thread_cache_E'"* in OsmPlugin.dll`.
• Always set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX. Without it Marble tries to install into C:\Program Files (x86)\marble and fails with "Maybe need administrative privileges".
• make install is required: it collects the headers into install/include/marble/ and copies the generated marble_export.h. Without it you get fatal error: marble/MarbleWidget.h: No such file or directory.

After installing you should have:

marble/install/include/marble/MarbleWidget.h
marble/install/lib/libmarblewidget-qt5.dll.a

Windows with Qt 6

Only use this if RetroShare itself is built with Qt 6.

Dependencies:

pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-extra-cmake-modules \
                   mingw-w64-x86_64-qt6-base mingw-w64-x86_64-qt6-svg \
                   mingw-w64-x86_64-qt6-tools mingw-w64-x86_64-qt6-declarative

Build Marble from master (no branch checkout, no QT_MAJOR_VERSION):

cd /c/Users/<you>/Documents/GitHub/marble
git checkout master
rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles" \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/c/Users/<you>/Documents/GitHub/marble/install \
  -DBUILD_MARBLE_APPS=OFF -DBUILD_MARBLE_TESTS=OFF -DBUILD_MARBLE_EXAMPLES=OFF
make -j8
make install

This gives install/lib/libmarblewidget-qt6.dll.a. Build the plugin with the Qt 6 qmake (qmake6) instead of qmake; everything else is the same.

Build the plugin

Add the plugin to RetroShare/plugins/plugins.pro:

FriendsMap \

Or build it on its own:

cd RetroShare/plugins/FriendsMap
qmake          # Qt 5   (use qmake6 for Qt 6)
mingw32-make

Re-run qmake whenever FriendMap.pro or the Marble paths change.

In Qt Creator open RetroShare.pro (not FriendMap.pro); you can then rebuild only this plugin once the other RetroShare components are built.

Install the plugin

Run the deploy script from the FriendsMap folder (in a normal cmd window):

deploy-friendsmap.bat "C:\path\to\RetroShare"

(the folder that contains retroshare.exe). It copies:

• the plugin DLL to Data\extensions6 (portable) or %APPDATA%\RetroShare\extensions6,
• the Marble DLLs next to retroshare.exe,
• Marble data and plugins to RetroShare\marble\,
• missing MinGW/Qt runtime DLLs from MSYS2 (found with ldd),
• GeoLiteCity.dat to the extensions folder (downloaded once, see below).

Edit MSYS2_DIR / MARBLE_DIR at the top of the script if your paths differ.

GeoIP data (GeoLiteCity.dat)

MaxMind no longer publishes the legacy GeoLiteCity.dat. The plugin still uses the legacy GeoIP format, so use a GeoLite2 database converted to legacy format, e.g. from https://www.miyuru.lk/geoiplegacy — City, MaxMind, IPv4 (maxmind4.dat.gz). Unpack it and rename it to GeoLiteCity.dat. The deploy script does this automatically and keeps a copy next to the script; delete that copy to get a newer one.

Attribution: Geolocation database of MaxMind converted by Miyuru Sankalpa.

Start RetroShare. The first start can be slow. If needed, set the correct paths under Options → FriendMap.

For distributors

FriendMap needs Marble's data and plugins. Either ask users to install Marble, or ship these files with RetroShare:

• Create a marble folder inside the RetroShare folder.
• Copy marble\install\data to RetroShare\marble\data.
• Copy marble\install\plugins to RetroShare\marble\plugins.
• marble.exe and the other Marble apps are not needed.

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Credits

• Nyfor — original author
• Chozabu — updates and maintenance

Contributors:

• Morpheus Being
• hunbernd