Development/CMake - KDE TechBase

Most KDE software uses CMake as a buildsystem. This page is the starting point for CMake-related documentation for KDE software.

You should be aware that there are two main development platforms that KDE software is based on: the older kdelibs4, and its replacement, the KDE Frameworks. Quite a bit of KDE software is in the process of transitioning from kdelibs4 to KDE Frameworks, and the way CMake is used is slightly different between the two.

Building a project with CMake

If you just want to build a CMake-based project on a UNIX system, the following recipe will do that:

   cd /path/to/project/source
   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/where/to/install/to ..
   make
   make install

Don't forget to replace both paths. If you want an explanation of what this command does and how to make CMake behave differently, or you want to build on Windows or OS/X, see Development/CMake/Building.

Useful resources

You may want to check out the CMake wiki, although beware that it contains quite a bit of out-of-date information.

Reference documentation

Upgrading from KDELibs4

KDELibs4 made lots of modifications to the CMake environment, and provided lots of custom macros that wrapped CMake's own ones. We now try to avoid that, but this means that moving an existing project from KDELibs4 to KDE Frameworks involves making some changes. A list of these changes can be found at Development/CMake/IncompatibleChangesKDELibs4ToECM.

FAQs

Mailing lists

The kde-buildsystem mailing list: Discussion of CMake in the KDE community, as well as development of Extra CMake Modules.
CMake mailing list: For users of CMake.
CMake mailing list: For anyone wanting to contribute to CMake.

KDE4 Specific CMake Documentation

CMake tutorial: An introduction to using CMake for KDE4

KDE's CMake FAQ: Some Frequently Asked Questions

KDE CMake modules API: Documentation for all CMake modules in kdelibs (generated from kdelibs svn)

Nightly dashboard builds for KDE: Describes the quality dashboard for KDE and how to set up Nightly builds for it

KDE4 CMake Buildtypes, macros and variables: Documentation for the buildtypes (debugfull, release, ...), macros and variables for building KDE4 software, provided by FindKDE4Internal.cmake (manually written)

Automoc4: Automoc4 documentation.

CMake for Python projects: How to integrate a Python project into the KDE4 cmake system.

KDE 4 Tutorial at the CMake Wiki: "KDE4 tutorial"

Policies

Commit Policy for kdelibs/cmake/modules/: The files in kdelibs/cmake/modules/ are part of the public interface of KDE, some special policies apply to committing there.

Source compatiblity with CMake: This page discusses what has to be taken care of in order to stay source compatible on the CMake level.

Coding style for CMake files: Some guidelines how to write CMake scripts in KDE.

Changelog for KDE's CMake buildsystem

Changes in the buildsystem with KDE 4.5: What has changed in KDE 4.5 compared to KDE 4.4

Changes in the buildsystem with KDE 4.4: What has changed in KDE 4.4 compared to KDE 4.3

Changes in the buildsystem with KDE 4.3: What has changed in KDE 4.3 compared to KDE 4.2

Changes in the buildsystem with KDE 4.2: What has changed in KDE 4.2 compared to KDE 4.0/4.1