Getting Started/Build/KDE4.1

Objectives

You probably want to keep your current KDE-3.5.x installation till you feel that KDE-4.x.y meets your needs for actual day to day use of your computer. Yet, you want to be able to change over with a minimum of work when the time comes to make the switch.

Method

The best way to accomplish this is to install the needed libraries on your system in the usual manner. Convention is that these should be installed in the /usr/local/ directory. By default, Troll Tech installs Qt in: /usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4/. The current KDE-4.0 release branch should be built against Qt-4.3.x (the latest in this branch is 4.3.3 which should be used unless there are reasons not to use it). It is best to install KDE-4.x.y in its own directory so that the directory can be deleted if some large problem occurs. I will be using /usr/local/KDE-4.0/ but you can call it whatever you want.

We will keep configurations straight by using a separate user for accessing KDE-4.x.y. This user account will contain your configurations and will have a script to set the environment variables (.bash_profile if using Linux).

Installation

Create the User Account

Use whatever method you wish to create a new user account. Mine is called: "KDE4". Then edit or create the user specific login script (.bash_profile for Linux). There is a lot that goes into this. Note that this presumes that USER was correctly set by the system login script.

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# Redundant setting of HOME as work around for Bash bug

HOME=/home/KDE4

PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH export PATH HOME

XDG_DATA_HOME="$HOME/.local/share"

XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config"

export XDG_DATA_HOME XDG_CONFIG_HOME

KDEDIR=/usr/local/KDE-4.0

KDEHOME=$HOME/.kde4

KDETMP=/tmp/$USER-kde4

mkdir -p $KDETMP

KDEVARTMP=/var/tmp/$USER-kde4

mkdir -p $KDEVARTMP

KDEDIRS=$KDEDIR

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/KDE-4.0/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

export KDEDIR KDEHOME KDETMP KDEVARTMP KDEDIRS PKG_CONFIG_PATH

QTDIR=/usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4

QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib/kde4/plugins:$QT_PLUGIN_PATH

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$QTDIR/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

export QTDIR QT_PLUGIN_PATH PKG_CONFIG_PATH

PATH=$QTDIR/bin:$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH

export PATH

XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/usr/local/KDE-4.0/etc/xdg

XDG_DATA_DIRS=$KDEDIR/share

export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS XDG_DATA_DIRS

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$KDEDIR/lib

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK="true"

export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK

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This is in addition to other things that you need in the script which would probably go at the beginning -- this large block of junk is to be added at the end. The XDG directories might need to be modified for your system.