Getting Started

Warning

These pages are currently being completely re-written to reflect the new KDE infrastructure and may not be in a consistent state. Information and commands on some page may no longer be valid and should be used with care.

Getting_Started

Introduction

This section of KDE TechBase is designed to help get you started in participating in the technical side of the KDE community. It will explain to you how KDE Software is structured and built, and how you can participate.

There are many other ways you can Contribute to KDE both technical and non-technical without having to build your own copy of KDE Software.

If you just want to use stable KDE software for your everyday computing needs, then you do not need to build KDE Software for yourself. You should instead use the software installer provided by your Linux distribution or for your platform. The best place to learn how to do this is through your distributions normal support channels, although you may find some useful information on the following pages:

Install KDE Software on Linux and BSD Distributions
Install KDE Software on Windows
Mac OS X does not currently have an installer available for KDE Software, but you can simplify building it by using MacPorts or Fink

Getting Help

If you are looking for help in using the KDE Workspace or KDE Applications then please visit the KDE UserBase.

If you have any questions or problems with building or developing KDE Software please feel free to ask for help. However, be patient while waiting for a response, and try to work through the problem yourself, we aren't going to do it all for you. Working your way through and understanding why something doesn't work is a good way to learn how to do things the right way.

Building and Running KDE Software From Source

There are several possible ways to build and install KDE software and the method you choose depends on what you want to do with the software once it is built.

You may want to:

Develop a standalone application using the KDE Platform
Develop one of the KDE Applications
Develop the KDE Workspace or the KDE Platform
Test the latest KDE Software or an earlier stable version

In particular, for application development you may only need to build some parts of the KDE SC while relying on the KDE Development Platform stable packages from your distribution.

The table below provides some guidance in making this decision, but before you start building please read the rest of the pages for more detailed information on Getting Started.

Usage	Method
Everyday use of the KDE Workspace or Applications	Packaged Stable Release
Developing an application outside of the KDE development infrastructure using the stable KDE Development Platform.	Packaged Stable Release
Developing an application outside of the KDE development infrastructure using features from the unstable KDE Development Platform.	Snapshot Build
Developing an application in the KDE SC using the stable KDE Development Platform.	Stable Source Build
Developing an application in the KDE SC using features in the unstable KDE Development Platform.	Unstable Source Build
Developing the unstable KDE Development Platform.	Unstable Source Build

Method	Description
Stable Release Packages	Install a stable release of KDE Software from packages using your distributions standard software installer. For developers also install the development packages as required.
Unstable Packages	Some distributions provide packaged unstable snapshots of KDE Software.
Snapshot Build	Build a snapshot of the source code as at a given time or release from a tarball download. These may be stable or unstable releases or nightly snapshots
Stable Source Build	Build a version of the source code for an official release directly from the source repository.
Unstable Source Build	Build the current unstable development code directly from the source repository.

Build Steps

There are a series of steps you need to understand and follow to successfully build KDE Software from source. The following sections will take you through the process:

Development Model

TODO: General introduction to the dev model, release cycles, etc.

Development Tools

There are a number of Development Tools that are either required or helpful when building KDE Software. For these you will usually want to use the stable packages provided by your distribution.

You may want to use a graphical IDE for your development work:

Contributing To KDE

Once you have a copy of KDE built you can then start contributing back to KDE. The pages below will help you find out how you can help make KDE even better.