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| Tutorial Series | Getting Started |
| Previous | Anonymous SVN Quickstart Guide |
| What's Next | Set up KDE 4 for development |
| Further Reading | kdesvn-build: The KDE From Subversion Build Tool Increased Productivity in KDE4 with Scripts Introduction to CMake FreeBSD notes Instructions for Mac OS X Instructions for MS Windows |
This tutorial shows one way to get KDE from trunk running on Linux/BSD systems. There are also tutorials for FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris. Throughout the tutorial the bash shell is used.
| Warning |
|---|
| Expect a higher risk of build failure on Mondays when most kdelibs changes are committed. Dashboard reports unexpected breakages. You are encouraged to fix failing modules. |
The following needs to be installed to successfully use this tutorial:
| Note |
|---|
| Some people like to have a separate user account for KDE 4 (for instance an old bug deleted files by mistake), and the instructions below were written with that approach.
However it is much more efficient to do everything with a single user account, see Increased Productivity in KDE4 with Scripts for more details. You can still follow the instructions below, but don't put the environment variables in your .bashrc, put them in a separate file that you source to switch to the KDE 4 environment. |
| Note |
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| On some systems a new user is configured by default to use /bin/sh. Using /bin/sh can be very inconvenient to work with and you may want to change it to /bin/bash or another shell. On Ark Linux and Fedora, you can skip the -s /bin/bash switch - /bin/sh is bash. |
useradd -m kde-devel -s /bin/bash
passwd kde-devel
| Warning |
|---|
| The new kde-devel user will not be added automatically to all the user groups, which will result in not having sound, not being able to sudo, etc. Edit your /etc/groups file to add the kde-devel user to all the groups that you need (probably the groups that your usual username is already assigned to). |
Instead of using the commands above, you can also use the User module in the KDE Control Center if you already have KDE3 installed.
Copy the ~/.bashrc from your normal user account to the new kde-devel account. Next, copy and paste the contents of the example .bashrc into ~kde-devel/.bashrc. Be sure to comment out the line alias make=makeobj if you do not have the makeobj command available. You will probably also want to modify the path to make sure it doesn't include your kde3 paths. Also if you want to use KDevelop to develop KDE 4 applications you may pass the -GKDevelop3 flag to the cmake command (to make CMake generate KDevelop project files, it will help to avoid rebuilding in the future, see this).
To make it run, you have to open a new bash or to execute
source ~/.bashrc
This will provide access to commands such as cmakekde that are used in this tutorial as well as ensure that the proper paths are in place for Qt, KDE and CMake binaries.
For more information, please read the Getting Started/Increased Productivity in KDE4 with Scripts tutorial.
Switch to the user kde-devel: (don't forget the dash)
ssh -X kde-devel@localhost
| Note |
|---|
| If the ssh command fails, check out the Launching KDE 4 apps section of the KDE4 development guide. |
The requirements to build kde4 from source vary from distribution to distribution. Instructions for your distribution are provided below:
Your next compilation step depends on the packages supplied by your distro.
QtDBus and KDE are known to work with D-Bus versions 0.62, as well as 0.92 and upwards. Versions 0.60 and 0.61 may work too but are not tested. Versions 0.90 and 0.91 are known not to work. We recommend using post-1.0 release versions (at least 0.94), so consider upgrading if you haven't done so.
You may skip this section if you have a recent D-Bus version or if you don't want to upgrade. You probably want to skip building the bindings until/unless you know you will be building HAL (see below).
Before running these steps in the recipe, make sure your X11 headers and libraries are available. The configure script run on line 5 of the following instructions should output:
Building X11 code: yes
| Tip |
|---|
| Make sure you did set up your environment correctly as described above. This is necessary for the cs and cb functions to work. |
cs # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more wget http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus/dbus-1.0.2.tar.gz tar -xvzf dbus-1.0.2.tar.gz cd dbus-1.0.2/ ./configure --prefix=$DBUSDIR --localstatedir=/var make sudo make install sudo dbus-uuidgen --ensure
cs # see above wget http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus-glib/dbus-glib-0.74.tar.gz tar -xvzf dbus-glib-0.74.tar.gz cd dbus-glib-0.74/ ./configure --prefix=$DBUSDIR make sudo make install cd sudo chown -R kde-devel:kde-devel *
After changing into the source directory (line 1), D-Bus source code is downloaded from freedesktop.org (line 2) and unpacked (line 3). After going into the newly created D-Bus directory (line 4), the build is set up using the supplied configure script (line 5). After building (line 6) and installing (line 7) D-Bus, we use the dbus-uuidgen tool to install a machine identification file that allows the bus to start automatically when the desktop session starts (line 8).
Note that you need write access to /var for the last two steps. If your system does not have the sudo command, you can use the su command instead, e.g. su -c "make install".
The steps for building the glib bindings are similar to the above.
When these two packages are done building, we must fix the file ownership because 'sudo make install' has created root owned files and directories in ~kde-devel/kde.
Skip this if you have CMake >=2.4.5 installed. You should be able to directly use the binary packages available on the CMake site. There are also distribution specific packages available.
cs # 'cs' is a bash function, click Here to learn more wget http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.4/cmake-2.4.6.tar.gz tar -zxf cmake-2.4.6.tar.gz mkdir cmake-build cd cmake-build ../cmake-2.4.6/bootstrap make sudo make install
First, we go back to the kde-devel user's source directory (line 1), get the CMake sources (line 2) and unpack them (line 3). We create a directory to build CMake in (line 4) and go into it (line 5). We then run the CMake bootstrap script to set up the CMake build (line 6), then make (line 7) and install it (line 8) using the root user.
If your system does not have the sudo command, you can instead do su -c "make install".
Next we need to get Qt4. KDE is guaranteed to build against any Qt 4.3. Qt 4.2 and earlier are not supported and will not work.
If your distribution has a recent version of Qt4, that should work. Most distros backport bugfixes, and some distros, like Debian or openSUSE, even use the patches from KDE svn. In other cases, using the recipe below will give you a more stable Qt than your distro. Refer to the distribution specific sections above for more information.
As for now Qt3 compatibility layer in Qt 4 is mandatory, so please avoid using "-no-qt3support" option when building Qt4 from sources.
cd # Note: qt-copy lives in $HOME/qt-copy. See $QTDIR in .bashrc svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/qt-copy cd qt-copy ./apply_patches ./configure -nomake examples -nomake demos -qt-gif \ -no-exceptions -debug -fast -prefix $QTDIR make -j2
# if we don't install, we'll just clear obj files to # save disk space if [ $QTDIR = `pwd` ]; then \ find . -name '*.o' -delete ; \ else make install; fi;
We switch back to the kde-devel user's home directory (line 1) and download the source code using subversion (svn) from KDE's repository (line 2). After changing into the resulting qt-copy directory (line 3), we run a script that manages the patches that come with qt-copy (line 4).
Once the patches have been applied, we then set up the build using the configure script (line 5-6). The various command line options used are explained in the qt-copy/README.qt-copy file. Finally, we build the minimal requirements for KDE (line 7) and install (line 10) Qt. If install dir is the same as the current dir (line 8), then we just free some space (line 9) instead. If you want all the example and demo applications, you can either build them individually or simply do a make from the qt-copy directory.
Note that the installation does not require root as it installs Qt locally into $QTDIR. Anyway, installation is only needed if $QTDIR differs from $HOME/qt-copy, which is not the case if you have exactly followed the instructions.
If you get "error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory", install the devel package of xorg (the actual name may vary between operating systems, for example it is xorg-dev on Ubuntu based systems such as Kubuntu).
If you get an error in the configure step about missing defines, check the value of $QMAKESPEC. Some distributions set this to point directly to the system-installed Qt. If unset QMAKESPEC solves the problem, you probably want to add it to the ~/.bashrc script.
If you get an error ".pch/debug-shared/QtCore", this is because Qt-4.3 enables precompiled headers if your gcc supports it, but for some reason it doesn't work for you. If you use distcc, configure qt with -no-pch. If you use icecream, update to the latest icecream from svn trunk.
Try running any Qt program, like assistant. Note: You may need to run xhost +local:kde-devel as your regular kde3 user to run this application. If it crashes in QSpanData::adjustSpanMethods, then your problem is the oxygen style. Try removing lib/kde4/plugins/styles/kstyle-oxygen.so and lib/kde4/plugins/styles/oxygen.so if they exist in the KDE install prefix.
| Tip |
|---|
| You can use qdbusviewer to see if you have org.freedesktop.hal. If not, you might need a newer version of hal. If you have org.freedesktop.hal, you probably don't need to, and don't want to, roll your own HAL. |
If your system requires you to build a newer version of HAL, there's a decent chance you'll need to build other stuff as well, some of which may not be straight forward. Since this should only be required for older distros, instructions are on a separate page.
There are several libraries that KDE applications rely on in the kdesupport module. This includes Strigi and Soprano for file metadata and search, QImageBlitz for image manipulation needed in kdebase, eigen for visual effects in applications such as Kalzium, taglib for music players and qca for some cryptographic needs.
Strigi itself has a few dependencies as well: you will need the libraries and headers for libz, libbz2, openssl (libcrypto or libssl), libclucene (>=0.9.16a but watch out: version 0.9.17 does not work), and either libxml2 or libexpat.
Please remember that if you use openSUSE, you can install the needed packages from the KDE:KDE4 buildservice repository and do not have to bother with fiddling the details below. Skip to the kdelibs section.
cs # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kdesupport/ cd kdesupport cmakekde
We change to the base source directory (line 1). We download the sources in kdesupport using subversion (line 2), go into the new ~/kde/src/kdesupport directory (line 3), and commence the build (line 4). This will leave us in the kdesupport build directory after the build is completed.
If you get
cmakekde: command not found
then you have to go manually into the kdesupport directory in ~ and execute the command cmakekde. if this still doesn't work, then something is wrong with your bashrc.
If you get
CMake Error: This project requires some variables to be set, and cmake can not find them. Please set the following variables: LIBXML2_INCLUDE_DIR (ADVANCED)
you should install the development package for libxml2.
If you get
CMake Error: Could NOT find REDLAND
then you need librdf from the Redland. If your distribution does not provide the librdf package, you can download the source there: http://download.librdf.org/source/ and build it. (Gentoo users: The ebuild for librdf is named dev-libs/redland)
If you get
Fetching external item into 'kdesupport/admin' Error validating server certificate for 'https://...'
If you get
FILE cannot create directory: /usr/lib[64]/qt4/plugins/crypto. Maybe need administrative privileges. make: *** [install] Error 255
take a second look in the .bashrc file described above, are paths correct? ($QTDIR and $PATH are used to get the QT installation path) Alternatively, you may see this error if you decided to use a distribution installed version of qt4 and skipped the Qt install above. Either install qt-copy as describe above, or "sudo make install". If you use "sudo make install", make sure that you change the ownership back to your user for some of the ~/kde subdirectories that were effected by using sudo (ie. "sudo chown -R kde-devel:kde-devel ~/kde").
If you get a message related to
target libQtTest.so not found
you may need to recompile qt-copy. This time you should take out
-nomake demos -nomake examples
from the configure command, so that Qt generates library QtTest.
We can now move on to building KDE's base libraries.
cd cs # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more mkdir KDE && cd KDE svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/4.0/kdelibs cd kdelibs cmakekde
We change to the base source directory (line 1) then make and go into the KDE directory (line 2). We download the sources for kdelibs using subversion (line 3), go into the new ~/kde/src/KDE/kdelibs directory (line 4), and commence the build (line 5). This will leave us in the kdelibs build directory after the build is completed.
| Tip |
|---|
| There might be missing dependencies on your system! They are easily overlooked in the output of cmakekde. You might want to do a cmake $KDE_SRC/KDE/MODULE_NAME prior to compiling any kde modules (like kdelibs, kdepimlibs etc.) |
There are additional CMake modules in kdelibs/cmake/modules/ that are necessary for building KDE4 applications. These will be installed for you when kdelibs itself is installed.
If you have problems compiling kdelibs, first make sure the software in the Required Software section above is installed and works. Other possible hints include:
If cmakekde still gives the same error then try this
cd cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$KDEDIR \ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull \ -DKDE4_BUILD_TESTS=ON \ ~/kde/src/KDE/kdelibs make make install
update-alternatives --config qmake
KDE TechBase CMake Error: KDE Requires Qt to be built with SSL support
, install openssl-devel, remove CMakeCache.txt and re-compile QT.
kdelibs/kimgio/ico.cpp:188: undefined reference to `QImage::jumpTable()' it means you compiled QT without QT3 support(no, linking to a true QT3 install won't work)
make clean in kdelibs.
After kdelibs, but before kdebase, you need to build and install kdepimlibs.
cs KDE # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/4.0/kdepimlibs cd kdepimlibs cmakekde
We go into the KDE source directory (line 1), download the source code for kdepimlibs using subversion (line 2) and then go into the new ~/kde/src/KDE/kdepimlibs directory (line 3). We then commence the build (line 4). This will leave us in the kdepimlibs build directory after the build is completed.
If you have trouble compiling kdepimlibs:
kdebase is divided into three parts:
You can build all of kdebase at once, which is described in the recipe below. If you only want to build kdebase-runtime, which is the only requirement, you can replace cd kdebase with cd kdebase/runtime in the recipe below.
cs KDE # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/4.0/kdebase cd kdebase cmakekde
If you have troubles compiling kdebase:
You can now run KDE 4 programs (e.g. kwrite) by typing:
ssh -X kde-devel@localhost kwrite
KUniqueApplication: Cannot find the D-Bus session server
check if you can access the display, e.g. type
xclock
and see if a clock appears on the screen.
Error: standard icon theme "oxygen" not found! ASSERT: "!isEmpty()" in file /home/kde-devel/qt-copy/include/QtCore/../../src/corelib/tools/qlist.h, line 245 Aborted (core dumped)
You need to install kdebase - see above. It is enough to install the "runtime" directory from kdebase.
Although the API documentation for KDE is available online at api.kde.org, it is sometimes useful to have it on your own disk, for example when you want to use KDevelop for browsing the documentation or when you are not able to be online all the time.
Be aware that generating the API documentation can take several hours and takes almost half a gigabyte of diskspace. The generation is handled by a script in kdelibs/doc/api, you need doxygen to be able to run it.
To build the API documentation for kdelibs, type the following:
cs KDE/kdelibs # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more $KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/api/doxygen.sh \ --doxdatadir=$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/common .
Repeat for other modules as desired.
cd <module home> $KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/api/doxygen.sh \ --doxdatadir=$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/common .
Another, even easier method involves downloading this Doxyfile to your local system. Then simply change directory to where you want to create the documentation and run
% doxygen /path/to/Doxyfile
Then review the file doxygen.log to see the doxygen errors and warnings. You'll find the actual documentation in the apidocs subdirectory.
In order to keep the kde4 installation up to date, each of the modules installed should be updated periodically. As Monday is the day for big changes in kdelibs, Tuesday may be the best day to do this. For each module checked out, run svn up and make.
For example:
cs kdesupport # cs is not a typo
svn up
cb # cb is not a typo
make -j2 VERBOSE=1 && make install
Note: it is not necessary to run cmakekde for updates.
Many modules in KDE contain a large number of programs which could take a long time to download and compile. In cases where you want to work only on a particular program or programs in a module, it is possible to download and compile particular folders. In some cases, certain folders are required for any build of the module. This is determined in the CMakeLists.txt file of the module. For example the kdegames CMakeLists.txt file lists:
add_subdirectory(libkdegames)
add_subdirectory(libkmahjongg)
macro_optional_add_subdirectory(doc) macro_optional_add_subdirectory(lskat) macro_optional_add_subdirectory(katomic)
So, the libkdegames and libkmahjongg directories are required to build any of kdegames. The cmake directory will also usually be required. All the other directories (doc, katomic etc) are optional. They will be built if present on your machine. In this example, we build kmahjongg and kbattleship:
cs KDE
svn co -N kdegames # The -N switch performs a non-recursive checkout
cd kdegames
svn up libkdegames # Get required directories
svn up libkmahjongg
svn up cmake
svn up kbattleship # Get optional directories
svn up kmahjongg
cmakekde
What can happen over time, after some svn up commands, is that some of the tools used in the KDE build chain change their output format. For example, kcfg files are read by kconfig_compiler to produce configuration dialogs. CMake cannot detect those changes, and the compilation might fail. A workaround is to always force a re-generation of all such files:
find $KDE_SRC/KDE/kdebase -name "*.kcfg" | xargs touch
The same applies to ui files as produced by Qt designer.
When installing KDE 4 as a user, one will not be able to unlock a locked session. To work around this issue you can either:
su chown root.root $KDEDIR/lib/kde4/libexec/kcheckpass
or
chmod 755 $KDEDIR/lib/kde4/libexec/kcheckpass
Also you have to add a "kde" service in /etc/pam.d/ folder
For example for RH/Fedora based distros:
#%PAM-1.0 auth include system-auth account include system-auth password include system-auth session include system-auth
You are now ready to start building other svn modules in the same fashion as you built kdebase, running and testing KDE4 or writing your own patches and applications.
See the Set up KDE 4 for development tutorial for how to start KDE 4 applications and how to use KDevelop to work on them.
