View source for Getting Started/Build/Historic/KDE 3.4

This page explains how to download and install KDE 3.4.x from sources.

== Requirements ==
To compile KDE you need:
* [ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/ Qt 3.3.0 or newer]
* a C++ compiler which supports exceptions, preferably a recent gcc 3.x release. gcc 2.95.x is still working.
* bunzip2 to decompress .bz2 files. You can find it [ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/bzip2/ here]. Get <tt>libbz2</tt> while you're at it, it enables reading of .tar.bz2 files in konqueror, and one day, will give access to .bz2 files to all KDE applications.
* If you want SSL support (for instance for secure web sites in konqueror), make sure you install [http://www.openssl.org openssl], version 0.9.6 or later (versions 0.9.5x are ''not'' supported).
* For a better regular-expressions support in Javascript, install [http://www.pcre.org libpcre].
* For the KDE help system, you'll need to install [http://xmlsoft.org libxml2], version 2.3.13 or newer.
* There are additional modules that are compiled if the required library is present,  but they aren't critical to run KDE. For instance, <tt>libldap</tt> for the LDAP kioslave, and <tt>cdparanoia</tt> for the audiocd kioslave. A more detailed list of requirements is available in the [http://www.kde.org/info/requirements/3.4.php KDE 3.4 Requirements List]

== Download ==
In order to run KDE applications, you need the Qt, arts, and kdelibs packages. For a simple desktop (with a window manager, panel, etc), you will also need kdebase. The other packages contain many other applications by topic: networking, graphics, multimedia, games, utilities, toys, software development, etc.

You can find the Qt library (version 3.3.4) at ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/

KDE 3.4.x is available from http://download.kde.org/stable/

== Installation ==
Unlike most compiled software, Qt is compiled in the place where it will stay instead of using a 'make install'. Please read the INSTALL instructions in the Qt package. You need to set the <tt>QTDIR</tt> and <tt>KDEDIR</tt> to the locations where Qt and KDE will be installed, respectively. Also, append <tt>$QTDIR/bin</tt> and <tt>$KDEDIR/bin</tt> to your <tt>$PATH</tt> and <tt>$LD_LIBRARY_PATH</tt>. Alternatively, instead of using $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, you may add your Qt and KDE library paths to {{path|/etc/ld.so.conf}}, but don't forget to run ldconfig as root after installing Qt and kdelibs, otherwise configure scripts will fail to find the newly installed libraries!

If your distribution sets <tt>$XDG_DATA_DIRS</tt> and/or <tt>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</tt> you will want to update them to include the correct <tt>$KDEDIR/share/</tt> resp. <tt>$KDEDIR/etc/xdg/</tt>

 bunzip2 qt-x11-3.3.4.tar.bz2
 tar xvf qt-x11-3.3.4.tar
 cd qt-x11-3.3.4
 less INSTALL
 # Set up QTDIR, KDEDIR, PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, XDG_DATA_DIRS and XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
 cd $QTDIR
 ./configure -system-zlib -qt-gif -system-libpng \
 -system-libjpeg -plugin-imgfmt-mng -thread -no-stl \
 -no-xinerama -no-g++-exceptions
 make

Note that <tt>-thread</tt> is ''required'' (KDE will not run or even compile if you omit it), that <tt>-no-xinerama</tt> is only if you're not using xinerama, and <tt>-no-g++-exceptions</tt> is strongly recommended if you're using gcc.

Make sure to compile and install first arts, and afterwards kdelibs before any other packages.  Also, if you want to use kdeaddons, it should be compiled last as it requires kdebase, kdemultimedia, etc.

For each KDE package:
 bunzip2 &lt;package&gt;.tar.bz2
 tar xvf &lt;package&gt;.tar
 cd &lt;package&gt;
 ./configure
 make
 make install

; Note:
* If compiling on a system where GNU make is not the default make (that is, most systems other than Linux), please run <tt>gmake && gmake install</tt> instead of <tt>make && make install</tt>.
* All packages mentioned here have to be compiled with the ''same'' compiler!

See the [http://www.kde.org/info/3.4.php KDE 3.4 Info Page] for some common encountered problems when running KDE 3.4.