Projects/Edu/KStars/Building KStars KF5

This page is a community effort to document the procedure to build the KDE Frameworks 5 version of KStars on various platforms and environments. We have a separate page for the old KDE4 version.

Why build from source?

Typically, you would want to build KStars from source if you plan to develop KStars, or stay on the bleeding edge and contribute valuable feedback.

Prerequisite Packages

To build and develop KStars, several packages may be required from your distribution. Here's a list.

Required dependencies

GNU Make, GCC -- Essential tools for building
cmake -- buildsystem used by KDE
QtBase, QtDeclarative, QtSvg
Several KDE Frameworks: KConfig, KDocTools, KGuiAddons, KWidgetsAddons, KNewStuff, KDBusAddons, KI18n, KInit, KJobWidgets, KIO, KWindowSystem, KXmlGui, KPlotting, KTextEditor, KIconThemes
eigen -- linear algebra library
zlib -- compression library

Optional dependencies

libcfitsio -- FITS library
libindi -- Instrument Neutral Distributed Interface, for controlling equipment.

Installing these packages

To install all of these, use the following commands:

Debian / Kubuntu

  sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake qtdeclarative5-dev libkf5config-dev kdoctools-dev libkf5guiaddons-dev libkf5widgetsaddons-dev libkf5newstuff-dev libkf5dbusaddons-dev libkf5i18n-dev libkf5init-dev libkf5jobwidgets-dev kio-dev libkf5windowsystem-dev libkf5xmlgui-dev libkf5plotting-dev libkf5texteditor-dev libkf5iconthemes-dev libeigen3-dev libcfitsio3-dev zlib1g-dev libindi-dev

Documentation on building various versions

Git

KStars development happens on KDE's git repository. (Git is an open-source version control software.). The code on git is the bleeding-edge developers' version of KStars. It does break occasionally.

1) create and change into a KDE development directory:

  mkdir ~/kde; cd ~/kde

2) to fetch the KStars source code:

  git clone git://anongit.kde.org/kstars

3) create and change into a build directory for compilation:

  mkdir build; cd build

4) run the configure process with cmake:

  cmake ../kstars -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/kde/usr

5) compile KStars:

  make

6) finally install KStars:

  make install

That’s all! This installs KStars locally into the separate directory ~/kde/usr, so that your global KDE installation will not be touched at all.

You can keep your copy up-to-date by typing `git pull --rebase` in ~/kde/kstars. Feel free to send patches to our mailing list [email protected]. And join #kde-edu on irc.kde.org :–)