Getting Started/Build/KDE4

Building KDE4 From Source

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

Abstract

This tutorial shows one way to get KDE from trunk running on Linux/BSD systems. Throughout the tutorial the bash shell is used. If you are interested in building KDE on other systems such as Solaris, MacOS or Microsoft Windows, please visit the Build page and see the links at the bottom for the respective operating systems.

Warning

Expect a higher risk of build failure on Mondays when critical changes are implemented. Dashboard reports unexpected breakages. You are encouraged to fix failing modules.

Required Software

The following must be installed first before you can successfully complete this tutorial:

• gcc and g++ from the gcc project, preferably version 4.1 or higher
• svn, the subversion revision control client
• pkg-config
• development libraries and headers for X11, OpenGL (mesa-common-dev and libglu1-mesa-dev), libjpeg, libpng, libungif, libclucene, librdf, libxml2 and libxslt
• the makeobj script, which is part of kdesdk. You can install it as part of kdesdk (kdesdk-scripts on Debian) or similar package, or just download it itself from WebSVN
• the shared-mime-info package, which is the freedesktop MIME standard KDE is using now
• boost, needed by kdebase; after compiling and/or installing boost, in order to make cmake aware about its location (FindBoost), add boost directory (the one containing include subdirectory) to CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH or set an environment variable called BOOST_ROOT pointing to boost directory.

You may also want to have the following installed:

• bash

Kubuntu

In Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) the build dependencies you need are installed with: sudo aptitude install build-essential cdbs debhelper cmake libungif4-dev \ libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libbz2-dev libclucene-dev librdf-dev \ shared-mime-info libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev mesa-common-dev \ libxext-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libsm-dev libxinerama-dev \ libxrender-dev libfontconfig-dev libboost-dev libxcursor-dev

You can skip the manual installation of Qt 4.3, CMake 2.4.6 and DBus by installing the following packages (and their dependencies): sudo aptitude install libqt4-dev-kdecopy libdbus-1-dev cmake

And for fully functional apidox frame work you also need: sudo aptitude install graphviz

openSUSE

In openSUSE, you can install packages using Zypper: sudo zypper install <package-name>

In older releases of SUSE, you can use YaST: yast2 -i <packagename>

Many of the packages you will need are:

xorg-x11-devel, libxml2-devel, kdesdk3, clucene-core-devel, libjpeg-devel, liblrdf-devel, libpng-devel, libxslt-devel, Mesa-devel, giflib-devel, subversion, gcc, gcc-c++

CMake binary packages for openSUSE are available from openSUSE build service.

Create a user account for KDE4 development

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.

Option 1: Command Line

useradd -m kde-devel passwd kde-devel

Option 2: Using KControl

Instead of using the commands above, you can also use the User module in the KDE Control Center if you already have KDE3 installed.

Setting up the environment

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. 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.

Switching to the New User

Switch to the user kde-devel: (don't forget the dash) su - kde-devel

The rest of this tutorial assumes you are running as the kde-devel user.

The development user's shell

On some systems a new user is configured by default to use /bin/sh. If this is not the case on your system, you can skip this section. Using /bin/sh can be very inconvenient to work with and you may want to change it to /bin/bash or another shell.

Option 1: As the kde-devel user

If you don't have root privileges and your system supports the changing of your own shell with the chsh application, then you could try to change your shell to /bin/bash by using: chsh -s /bin/bash kde-devel

Option 2: As the root user

If your system comes with the usermod application you can run the following command as root: usermod -s /bin/bash.

Another option is to use the vipw application as root to safely edit your /etc/passwd. Locate 'kde-devel' in the the file. Change '/bin/sh' at the end of the line to read '/bin/bash', save your changes and exit.

The new shell will be started automatically when you log in as the kde-devel user again.

D-Bus

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.

Before running these steps in the recipe, make sure your X11 headers and libraries are available. The configure script run on line 5 should output:

Building X11 code:        yes

The Recipe

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=$DBUSDIR --localstatedir=$KDEDIR/var
make
make install
dbus-uuidgen --ensure

What's Happening

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".

Troubleshooting

If you get the error makeobj: command not found you are lacking the command makeobj.

CMake

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.

The Recipe

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

What's Happening

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".

Qt

Next we need to get the Qt4 that is in KDE's source repository. KDE is guaranteed to build against any Qt 4.3. Qt 4.2 and earlier are not supported and will not work. Qt 4.3 has been released only recently, so your distribution probably doesn't have packages for it yet (known exceptions: Kubuntu). You should use the copy in the KDE Subversion servers.

The Recipe

cd
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/qt-copy
cd qt-copy
./apply_patches
./configure -qt-gif -no-exceptions -debug -fast \
 -prefix $QTDIR -qdbus -pch -nomake examples \
 -nomake demos
make -j2
# make install: only if QTDIR is not the current directory!
make install

What's Happening

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 5-7). 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 8) and install (line 9-10) Qt. 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.

Troubleshooting

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. 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.

Strigi

Warning

If you have jumped to this section without reading Setting Up The Environment, the recipes provided will not work. The recipes are not in error; cs and cb are not typos. Your environment needs to be set up correctly for these instructions to work for you.

The code for getting file metadata now relies on Strigi. To install Strigi you need the libraries and headers for libz, libbz2, openssl (libcrypto or libssl), libclucene (=0.9.16; version 0.9.17 does not work), and either libxml2 or libexpat.

The Recipe

cs # cs is not a typo
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kdesupport/strigi
cd strigi
cmakekde

What's Happening

We change to the base source directory (line 1). We download the sources for Strigi using subversion (line 2), go into the new ~/src/strigi directory (line 3), and commence the build (line 4). This will leave us in the strigi build directory after the build is completed.

TroubleShooting

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.

Soprano

Warning

If you have jumped to this section without reading Setting Up The Environment, the recipes provided will not work. The recipes are not in error; cs and cb are not typos. Your environment needs to be set up correctly for these instructions to work for you.

The code for getting file kmetadata relies on Soprano. To install Soprano you need the libraries and headers for librdf.

The Recipe

cd $KDE_SRC
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kdesupport/soprano
cd soprano
cmakekde

What's Happening

We change to the base source directory (line 1). We download the sources for Soprano using subversion (line 2), go into the new ~/src/soprano directory (line 3), and commence the build (line 4). This will leave us in the soprano build directory after the build is completed.

TroubleShooting

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. On Gentoo the package is called 'redland', instead of librdf.

kdelibs

With Qt4 and Strigi built, we can now move on to building KDE's base libraries. If you use the aforementioned .bashrc this is where those new functions come in handy.

The Recipe

cd $KDE_SRC
mkdir KDE && cd KDE
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs
cd kdelibs
cmakekde

What's Happening

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 ~/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.)

Additional KDE-specific CMake modules

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.

Troubleshooting

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 the cmakekde command fails stating that CMake requires an out of source build directory, remove ~/src/KDE/kdelibs/CMakeCache.txt, and try again.

If cmakekde still gives the same error then try this

cd
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$KDEDIR \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull \
-DKDE4_BUILD_TESTS=ON \
~/src/KDE/kdelibs
make
make install

• If you received an error stating "Please create a separate build directory and run 'cmake path_to_kdelibs [options]' there.", then you need to change to your build directory before running cmakekde. (e.g cs KDE/kdelibs && cb && cmakekde)
• If Qt wasn't found or the wrong version of Qt was found, make sure that the qmake from the Qt you need is the first qmake in the path.
• If the problems persist, try the CMake make-option --keep-going.
• Here you need the libungif library, otherwise you will get an error message like "Could NOT find GIF".
• Qt-4.3 upgrade: if you get a link error in kjsembed talking about QScriptEngine, edit CMakeCache.txt in kdelibs and remove the lines that talk about QT_QTUITOOLS_LIBRARY, then type make again (that static library has a new dependency, and the cmake code that adds it needs to run).
• if you get CMake Error: KDE Requires Qt to be built with SSL support

, install openssl-devel, and re-compile QT.

kdepimlibs

After kdelibs, but before kdebase, you need to build and install kdepimlibs.

The Recipe

cs KDE # cs is not a typo
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdepimlibs
cd kdepimlibs
cmakekde

What's Happening

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 ~/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.

kdebase

You may need kdebase for some kioslaves.

cs KDE # cs is not a typo
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdebase
cd kdebase
cmakekde

Troubleshooting

If you have troubles compiling kdebase:

• Make sure you have the libxss headers installed. (Usually you got undefined references on xscreensaver objects if you haven't those headers)
• which meinproc has to deliver /home/kde-devel/kde/bin/meinproc
• if cmakekde can not find the path of kdepimlibs, edit the file $KDE_BUILD/kdebase/CMakeCache.txt and manually set KDEPIMLIBS_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH=$KDE_BUILD/kdepimlibs
• if you get an error saying "Please set the following variables: X11_XTest_LIB (ADVANCED)", install the devel package of Xtst. On some systems, this is packaged separately from xext and called x11proto-xext-dev or libxtst-dev. You may also need to remove the CMakeCache.txt file in the build dir after installing the package.
• the same for "X11_Xinerama_LIB (ADVANCED)" where you will need the devel package for xinerama.
• if you get the error "Please set the following variables: FONTCONFIG_INCLUDE_DIR, FONTCONFIG_LIBRARIES (ADVANCED)", then you need to install the libfontconfig headers
• if you get the error "CMake Error: This project requires some variables to be set, and cmake can not find them. Please set the following variables: KMETADATA_LIBRARIES", you need to install soprano from kdesupport and to rebuild kdelibs
• if you get the error "‘XserverRegion’ does not name a type" make sure you have libxcomposite headers installed (libxcomposite-dev in ubuntu)

Generating local API documentation

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 not a typo
$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/api/doxygen.sh \
--doxdatadir=$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/common .

Repeat for other modules as desired.

General troubleshooting

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.

Success!

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.