Getting Started/Sources/Anonymous SVN

For those of us that like to stay on the "bleeding edge" there's an easy way to keep a local copy of the KDE sources up-to-date. No more trying to log on to ftp.kde.org to get the latest snapshot. No more wandering aimlessly through mirrors looking for one that's up to date. Just a simple command line operation to get up-to-the-minute source updates. Just use anonymous SVN.

Using anonymous SVN is simple:

1. Install the SVN binary. Your distribution should have one. Alternatively you can download and compile it yourself via SVN download page.
2. The following is a minimal set of modules you need:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdebase

NOTE: Only use "co" for the initial checkout. please update your local sources afterwards by using "svn up modulename".

NOTE: If your firewall doesn't allow access to arbitrary ports, you want to substitute svn://anonsvn.kde.org/ with svn://anonsvn.kde.org:443/ above.

3. The various KDE modules have tags so it is possible to get a specifc release of KDE. Most KDE modules have a tag name in the format tags/KDE/X.Y.Z (where X, Y and Z represent the exact version). The arts module has a different format of tag name, tags/arts/X.Y.Z. WebSVN is a convenient way to check for a tag name. For instance to get KDE 3.4's kdelibs, use:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/tags/KDE/3.4.0/kdelibs/

If you then want to update to KDE 3.4.1, use this command:

svn switch svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/tags/KDE/3.4.1/kdelibs

If you used a /branch/ or /trunk/ path, then there is no need to switch, just run svn update.

4. NOTE: trunk is moving into the direction of KDE 4, which means it is based on Qt 4 and generally very few things work or compile at all. You're most likely interested in staying on the stable branch, which is KDE 3.5 currently. To check out KDE 3.5, use:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/arts/1.5/arts
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/3.5/kdelibs
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/3.5/kdebase
...

5. If you want to have a full copy of the KDE distribution, you want to check out

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE

If you want additional sources, you can check out the following modules instead of KDE:

koffice
extragear
kdenonbeta
playground
kdereview

For example if you want to check out koffice trunk, you can use

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/koffice

If you're looking for the internationalisation, check out the l10n module (Warning: HUGE!).

6. Please read the KDE Subversion tutorial if you're more interested in how to use Subversion.

7. qt-copy is a copy of the latest stable Qt release which works with KDE, put into SVN for convenience. It contains additional patches that fix bugs or add enhancement KDE can make optionally use of. Qt and KDE need to know where Qt is compiled, so do an export QTDIR=/your/dir/to/qt-copy (use the full path to the qt-copy you got in the previous step) and remember to do this again before you do configure in the next step.

After that use these options for configure (as stated in README.qt-copy) and then do a make.

8. To compile your new kde source tree simply cd into each directory and execute the following commands:

make -f Makefile.cvs
./configure
make
make install

Also of interest:

anonsvn.kde.org is located in Tuebingen, Germany, maintained by Dirk Mueller However, a more local mirror could be faster for you than anonsvn.kde.org itself. Current mirrors are, sorted by performance:
- kde.mneisen.org is located near Nuernberg, Germany, maintained by Martin Eisenhardt

Be careful when switching between mirrors. SVN remembers the server in the working copy, so to switch you have to run

svn switch --relocate svn://anonsvn.kde.org/ svn://kde.mneisen.org/

in all your checkouts.

For a script that updates via SVN and compiles KDE automatically, see kdesdk/scripts/kde-build.

If you're interested in setting up a svn mirror, please contact Dirk Mueller.

Getting Started/Sources/Anonymous SVN

See also