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: anonymous SVN.

Using anonymous SVN is simple:

• 1. Install the Subversion binary. Your operating system should have a package for it. Alternatively you can download and compile it yourself via the SVN download page. Please read the KDE Subversion tutorial if you are interested in how to use Subversion.

• 2. The following is the minimal set of modules you will need to check out:

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

 

Tip
Only use "svn co" for the initial checkout, after which update your local sources afterwards by using "svn up modulename".

 

Tip
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. qt-copy is a copy of the latest stable Qt release which works with KDE, put into SVN for convenience. It also contains additional patches that fix bugs or add enhancements KDE makes use of. You can obtain qt-copy by doing:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/qt-copy

• 4. trunk is where KDE 4, which is based on Qt 4, is being developed. If you want to track the KDE 3 tree, check out KDE 3.5, using:

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/

• 5. 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 3.5's kdelibs, use:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/tags/KDE/3.5.0/kdelibs/

If you then want to update to KDE 3.5.5, use this command:

svn switch svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/tags/KDE/3.5.5/kdelibs

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

• 5. If you want to have a full copy of the KDE distribution, you can simply check out the entire source tree with one command:

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

If you want additional software packages you can check out the following modules within trunk/ as well:

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 

• 6. If you're looking for the internationalisation, check out the l10n module.

 

Warning
The l10n module is extremely large. Be sure you have lots of time and disk space on hand before checking out the entire l10n module. Most people only check out specific language subdirectories rather than the whole modules.