Development/Tools

This section contains information about tools for KDE development.

Debugging and Analysis

A list of tools which are used to analyze a program. This includes debuggers and profilers, for instance.

Valgrind: Valgrind helps to find memory leaks and uninitialized memory blocks. Additional features are a profiler and more. Valgrind is one of the most important development tools!

The GNU Project Debugger (GDB): GDB helps in debugging source code. As GDB evolved over time it is recommended to use version 6.x. Graphical frontends are available (see below). See also the debugging tutorial Debugging with GDB.

KDbg and DDD: KDbg and DDD are graphical user interfaces to GDB, which are able to set breakpoints, step through the code etc.

MS Windows tools (Process Explorer, Console, WinDbg, DebugView...): More info on the KDE on Windows page.

Development Tools

KDevelop: KDevelop is an excellent IDE for developing KDE and Qt C++ applications. It includes a an integrated debugger, a powerful editor with syntax highlighting, a Project wizard to create applications from templates, the automake/autoconf gunk, and even the class documentation. Further details can also be found in the KDevelop wiki.

Instructions on how to use KDevelop with KDE 4 applications is available at this page

Qt Designer: With Trolltechs Qt Designer it is easy to layout user interfaces like buttons and checkboxes. Additional features are undo/redo, checking accelerator conflicts etc. Qt Designer allows even non-programmers to help design KDE dialogs. Further details can be found in the tutorial Using Qt Designer and in the Qt documentation.

MS Visual Studio® Express 2005 IDE (Windows only): Visual C++® 2005 Express Edition [1] is the free version of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 compiler from Microsoft, which is officially supported by Trolltech since Qt 4.3.2. It is a choice for compiling Qt and KDE applications on Windows. more info...

Internationalization (i18n) Tools

KBabel: KBabel is a set of tools for editing and managing gettext PO files. Its main part is a powerful and comfortable PO file editor which features full navigation capabilities, full editing functionality, possibility to search for translations in different dictionaries, spell and syntax checking, showing diffs and many more.

Also included is a "Catalog Manager", a file manager view which helps in keeping an overview of PO files. Last but not least it includes a standalone dictionary application as an additional possibility to access KBabel's powerful dictionaries. KBabel will help you to translate fast and also keep consistent translations.

Dr. Klash: This little utility, once activated, can present a report about conflicting shortcuts in menus. Not only is this helpful for translators but also for developers. A little hand editing of `kde-config --localprefix`/share/config/kdeglobals activates this feature:

[Development] CheckAccelerators=F12 AutoCheckAccelerators=false AlwaysShowCheckAccelerators=false

Pressing F12 will show a dialog containing which accelerators in the currently focussed interface conflict and provide suggestions for new accelerators. If no accelerators conflict or Dr. Klash has nothing to suggest, no popup dialog will be displayed.

With AutoCheckAccelerators enabled the dialog will popup automatically if a conflict exists and AlwaysShowCheckAccelerators can force the dialog to always popup even if there are no conflicts to report.

The x-test language: This helper language serves as a debugging aid for people finding untranslated strings in applications. If you start your application with the "x-test" locale, all translated strings will appear with trailing and leading xx's. First you have to check out these "translations" from l10n-kde4/x-test and install them.

After you've built l10n-kde4/x-test and installed it, run your application using the "x-test" locale. This can be done by launching it from the command line like this:

> KDE_LANG=x-test kspread

This will start KSpread using the "x-test" locale no matter what your current language setting is. Look for strings that do not have the xx's. If xx's are missing from a string, it could be due to missing i18n calls or even missing or incorrectly generated .pot files. Consult the i18n tutorials for further information.

When checking for untranslated strings, be sure to check all the WhatsThis help and tooltips.

Examining .po files

You can look at the translated .po files to see if a string is present and has been translated. For example, here's a portion of l10n/de/messages/kdebase/konqueror.po:

#: konq_mainwindow.cc:3707 konq_tabs.cc:84
msgid "&New Tab"
msgstr "Neues &Unterfenster"

The string to be translated is given on the msgid line. The translated string is on the msgstr line. Notice that the exact same string to translate came from konq_mainwindow.cc and also from konq_tabs.cc. This saves the translators from having to translate the same identical string twice.

You can also use KBabel to examine .po files. KBabel is part of the kdesdk module.

Note

More information on writing and translating documentation can be found on the l10n project site.

Helper Tools

Get information about KDE's installation - kde-config: The tool kde-config helps to find out more about a KDE installation.

Driving Konqueror From Scripts - kfmclient: kfmclient is a small tool to communicate with Konqueror.

Updating User Configuration Files - kconf_update: kconf_update is a tool designed to update config files.

Generating apidox: tools that help develop and generate API documentation for your code.

Automoc4: This is a helper tool needed to build KDE4. It automatically generates moc-files.

svnmerge.py: This tool helps keeping track of merges between different SVN branches

Quality Assurance

Continuous Building - Dashboard: all kde modules on Dirk's dashboard; kdelibs on kitware

English Breakfast Network - Static Analysis: Krazy - Code Analysis, Usage Tutorial; APIDOX - API Documentation Statistics; Sanitizer - DocBook Checker; Usability Checks