Getting Started/Build/KDE4

Getting_Started/Build/KDE4

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Building KDE4 From Source

Tutorial Series	Getting Started
Previous	Anonymous SVN Quickstart Guide
What's Next	Set up KDE 4 for development
Further Reading	kdesvn-build: The KDE From Subversion Build Tool Increased Productivity in KDE4 with Scripts Introduction to CMake FreeBSD notes Instructions for Mac OS X Instructions for MS Windows

Abstract

This tutorial shows one way to get KDE from trunk running on Linux/BSD systems. There are also tutorials for FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris. Throughout the tutorial the bash shell is used.

Warning

Expect a higher risk of build failure on Mondays when most kdelibs changes are committed. Dashboard reports unexpected breakages. You are encouraged to fix failing modules.

Required Software

The following must be installed first before you can successfully complete this tutorial:

• gcc and g++ from the gcc project, preferably version 4.1 or higher
• svn, the subversion revision control client
• pkg-config
• development libraries and headers for X11, OpenGL (mesa-common-dev and libglu1-mesa-dev), libjpeg, libpng, libungif, libclucene, librdf, libxml2 and libxslt
• the makeobj script, which is part of kdesdk. You can install it as part of kdesdk (kdesdk-scripts on Debian) or similar package, or just download it itself from WebSVN
• the shared-mime-info package, which is the freedesktop MIME standard KDE is using now
• boost, needed by kdebase; after compiling and/or installing boost, in order to make cmake aware about its location (FindBoost), add boost directory (the one containing include subdirectory) to CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH or set an environment variable called BOOST_ROOT pointing to boost directory.

Ark Linux

In Ark Linux, the build dependencies you need are installed with:

apt-get install devel-core libxml-devel libxslt-devel bzip2-devel \ clucene-devel librdf-devel shared-mime-info xorg-Mesa-libGL-devel \ subversion boost-devel doxygen giflib-devel dbus-devel openssl-devel \ alsa-lib-devel kdesdk-scripts qt4-devel

If you prefer a graphical interface, select the packages listed above in the "Install Software" tool in Mission Control.

This includes installation of CMake, DBus and Qt - you can skip steps 5, 6 and 7.

Kubuntu and Debian

In Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) and Debian (Testing/Unstable) the build dependencies you need are installed with: sudo aptitude install build-essential cdbs debhelper cmake \ libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libbz2-dev libclucene-dev librdf-dev \ shared-mime-info libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev mesa-common-dev \ libxext-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev subversion libsm-dev libxinerama-dev \ libxrender-dev libfontconfig-dev libboost-dev libxcursor-dev doxygen \ libungif4-dev libdbus-1-dev libgpgme11-dev libssl-dev libgpgme11-dev \ libasound2-dev kdesdk-scripts libpth-dev libjasper-dev ssh

In Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) you have to add: sudo aptitude install dbus-x11

For a fully functional API documentation framework you also need: sudo aptitude install graphviz

openSUSE

In openSUSE 10.2 and newer, you can install packages using Zypper: sudo zypper install <package-name>

In older releases of SUSE, you can use YaST: su yast -i <packagename>

Required Packages

The packages you will need to install are: xorg-x11-devel libxml2-devel kdesdk3 clucene-core-devel boost-devel libjpeg-devel liblrdf-devel libpng-devel libxslt-devel libredland-devel Mesa-devel giflib-devel subversion gcc gcc-c++ gmp-devel (needed to build kdesupport) strigi-devel (needed to build kdelibs) gpgme-devel (needed to build kdepimlibs)

Optional Packages

You can skip the manual installation of Qt 4.3, CMake 2.4.6 and DBus by installing the adding the openSUSE Build Service KDE4 Repository to your installation sources.

For openSUSE 10.2 and newer do: sudo zypper service-add http://software.opensuse.org/download/KDE:/KDE4/openSUSE_10.2 KDE4-102

For older versions of SUSE Linux do: su installation_sources -a http://software.opensuse.org/download/KDE:/KDE4/[YOUR SUSE LINUX VERSION]

Now install the following packages (and their dependencies): cmake dbus-1-devel libqt4-devel libqca2-devel (needed for building kdesupport)

And for fully functional apidox framework you also need: graphviz

CMake binary packages for openSUSE are available from openSUSE build service.

Gentoo

Install by hand

You can use stable ebuilds just remember to sync your portage before you begin.

Remember: All commands are executed as root.

Required:

We need to allow the following keyword masked ebuilds.

echo 'dev-util/cmake' >> /etc/portage/package.keywords echo 'dev-cpp/clucene' >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

Optional:

If you decide not to use the KDE qt-copy, you need to keyword unmask Qt.

echo 'x11-libs/qt' >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

And now need to mask any Clucene versions above 0.9.16a.

echo '>dev-cpp/clucene-0.9.16a' >> /etc/portage/package.mask

Make sure you have set the berkdb USE flag for redland, otherwise nepomuk won't work.

echo 'dev-libs/redland berkdb' >> /etc/portage/package.use

These are the packages you will need to emerge, I included the update option into the emerge command so you will not re-emerge anything that you might already have installed.

emerge -avu 'sys-devel/gcc' \

 'dev-util/subversion' \
 'dev-util/pkgconfig'  \
 'x11-base/xorg-x11' \
 'virtual/glut' \
 'media-libs/mesa' \
 'media-libs/jpeg' \
 'media-libs/libpng' \
 'media-libs/giflib' \
 'dev-cpp/clucene' \
 'dev-util/cppunit' \
 'media-libs/liblrdf' \
 'dev-libs/libxml2' \
 'dev-libs/libxslt' \
 'x11-misc/shared-mime-info' \
 'dev-libs/boost' \
 'dev-util/cmake' \
 'dev-libs/redland' \
 'sys-apps/dbus' \
 'sys-apps/hal'

You will also need to emerge either 'kde-base/kdesdk' or kde-base/kdesdk-scripts'.

Optional:

If you decided to use Gentoo's version of Qt4, you can emerge it using the following command.

emerge -avu 'x11-libs/qt'

If you emerged DBUS, CMAKE, QT or HAL you may skip those sections respectively. Good luck!

Install via portage

Also you can install the KDE 4 packages directly via emerge -a <packagename>

To get the things you need, install layman and then pull in the KDE overlay (which contains experimental KDE ebuilds): layman -a kde After this you need to adjust some USE-flags for KDE 4 and tell portage to use the testing KDE 4 ebuilds instead of the stable KDE 3 ones.

That way portage will do the dependency tracking for you.

Detailed instructions on building KDE 4 in Gentoo via portage can be found in the KDE overlay wiki. They are discussed in the thread KDE 4 monolithic ebuilds.

Create a user account for KDE4 development

Note

Some people like to have a separate user account for KDE 4 (for instance an old bug deleted files by mistake), and the instructions below were written with that approach.

However it is much more efficient to do everything with a single user account, see Increased Productivity in KDE4 with Scripts for more details.

You can still follow the instructions below, but don't put the environment variables in your .bashrc, put them in a separate file that you source to switch to the KDE 4 environment.

Option 1: Command Line

useradd -m kde-devel passwd kde-devel

Option 2: Using KControl

Instead of using the commands above, you can also use the User module in the KDE Control Center if you already have KDE3 installed.

Setting up the environment

Copy the ~/.bashrc from your normal user account to the new kde-devel account. Next, copy and paste the contents of the example .bashrc into ~kde-devel/.bashrc. Be sure to comment out the line alias make=makeobj if you do not have the makeobj command available. You will probably also want to modify the path to make sure it doesn't include your kde3 paths. Also if you want to use KDevelop to develop KDE 4 applications you may pass the -GKDevelop3 flag to the cmake command (to make CMake generate KDevelop project files, it will help to avoid rebuilding in the future, see this). To make it run, you have to open a new bash or to execute source ~/.bashrc

This will provide access to commands such as cmakekde that are used in this tutorial as well as ensure that the proper paths are in place for Qt, KDE and CMake binaries.

For more information, please read the Getting Started/Increased Productivity in KDE4 with Scripts tutorial.

Switching to the New User

Switch to the user kde-devel: (don't forget the dash) ssh -X kde-devel@localhost

The development user's shell

On some systems a new user is configured by default to use /bin/sh. If this is not the case on your system, you can skip this section. Using /bin/sh can be very inconvenient to work with and you may want to change it to /bin/bash or another shell. On Ark Linux, you can skip this step - /bin/sh is bash on Ark Linux.

Option 1: As the kde-devel user

If you don't have root privileges and your system supports the changing of your own shell with the chsh application, then you could try to change your shell to /bin/bash by using: chsh -s /bin/bash kde-devel

Option 2: As the root user

If your system comes with the usermod application you can run the following command as root: usermod -s /bin/bash.

Another option is to use the vipw application as root to safely edit your /etc/passwd. Locate 'kde-devel' in the the file. Change '/bin/sh' at the end of the line to read '/bin/bash', save your changes and exit.

The new shell will be started automatically when you log in as the kde-devel user again.

D-Bus

QtDBus and KDE are known to work with D-Bus versions 0.62, as well as 0.92 and upwards. Versions 0.60 and 0.61 may work too but are not tested. Versions 0.90 and 0.91 are known not to work. We recommend using post-1.0 release versions (at least 0.94), so consider upgrading if you haven't done so.

You may skip this section if you have a recent D-Bus version or if you don't want to upgrade. You probably want to skip building the bindings until/unless you know you will be building HAL (see below).

Before running these steps in the recipe, make sure your X11 headers and libraries are available. The configure script run on line 5 of the following instructions should output:

Building X11 code:        yes

The Recipe

Tip

Make sure you did set up your environment correctly as described above. This is necessary for the cs and cb functions to work.

cs # 'cs' is a bash function, click here to learn more 
wget http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus/dbus-1.0.2.tar.gz
tar -xvzf dbus-1.0.2.tar.gz
cd dbus-1.0.2/
./configure --prefix=$DBUSDIR --localstatedir=/var
make
sudo make install
sudo dbus-uuidgen --ensure

cs # see above
wget http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus-glib/dbus-glib-0.74.tar.gz
tar -xvzf dbus-glib-0.74.tar.gz
cd dbus-glib-0.74/
./configure --prefix=$DBUSDIR
make
sudo make install

What's Happening

After changing into the source directory (line 1), D-Bus source code is downloaded from freedesktop.org (line 2) and unpacked (line 3). After going into the newly created D-Bus directory (line 4), the build is set up using the supplied configure script (line 5). After building (line 6) and installing (line 7) D-Bus, we use the dbus-uuidgen tool to install a machine identification file that allows the bus to start automatically when the desktop session starts (line 8).

Note that you need write access to /var for the last two steps. If your system does not have the sudo command, you can use the su command instead, e.g. su -c "make install".

The steps for building the glib bindings are similar to the above.

CMake

Skip this if you have CMake >=2.4.5 installed. You should be able to directly use the binary packages available on the CMake site. There are also distribution specific packages available.

The Recipe

cs # 'cs' is a bash function, click Here to learn more 
wget http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.4/cmake-2.4.6.tar.gz
tar -zxf cmake-2.4.6.tar.gz
mkdir cmake-build
cd cmake-build 
../cmake-2.4.6/bootstrap
make
sudo make install

What's Happening

First, we go back to the kde-devel user's source directory (line 1), get the CMake sources (line 2) and unpack them (line 3). We create a directory to build CMake in (line 4) and go into it (line 5). We then run the CMake bootstrap script to set up the CMake build (line 6), then make (line 7) and install it (line 8) using the root user.

If your system does not have the sudo command, you can instead do su -c "make install".

Qt

Next we need to get the Qt4 that is in KDE's source repository. KDE is guaranteed to build against any Qt 4.3. Qt 4.2 and earlier are not supported and will not work. You should use the copy in the KDE Subversion servers. (note: some distros, like Debian, tend to supply Qt with patches from KDE svn applied, so you may want to cheat and use precompiled Qt from your distro)

The Recipe

cd
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/qt-copy
cd qt-copy
./apply_patches
./configure -qt-gif -no-exceptions -debug -fast \
 -prefix $QTDIR -nomake examples -nomake demos
make -j2

# if we don't install, we'll just clear obj files to
# save disk space
if [ $QTDIR = `pwd` ]; then \
find . -name '*.o' -delete ; \
else make install; fi;

What's Happening

We switch back to the kde-devel user's home directory (line 1) and download the source code using subversion (svn) from KDE's repository (line 2). After changing into the resulting qt-copy directory (line 3), we run a script that manages the patches that come with qt-copy (line 4).

Once the patches have been applied, we then set up the build using the configure script (line 5-6). The various command line options used are explained in the qt-copy/README.qt-copy file. Finally, we build the minimal requirements for KDE (line 7) and install (line 10) Qt. If install dir is the same as the current dir (line 8), then we just free some space (line 9) instead. If you want all the example and demo applications, you can either build them individually or simply do a make from the qt-copy directory.

Note that the installation does not require root as it installs Qt locally into $QTDIR. Anyway, installation is only needed if $QTDIR differs from $HOME/qt-copy, which is not the case if you have exactly followed the instructions.

Troubleshooting

If you get "error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory", install the devel package of xorg (the actual name may vary between operating systems, for example it is xorg-dev on Ubuntu based systems such as Kubuntu).

If you get an error in the configure step about missing defines, check the value of $QMAKESPEC. Some distributions set this to point directly to the system-installed Qt. If unset QMAKESPEC solves the problem, you probably want to add it to the ~/.bashrc script.

If you get an error ".pch/debug-shared/QtCore", this is because Qt-4.3 enables precompiled headers if your gcc supports it, but for some reason it doesn't work for you. If you use distcc, configure qt with -no-pch. If you use icecream, update to the latest icecream from svn trunk.

Try running any Qt program, like assistant. Note: You may need to run xhost +local:kde-devel as your regular kde3 user to run this application. If it crashes in QSpanData::adjustSpanMethods, then your problem is the oxygen style. Try removing lib/kde4/plugins/styles/kstyle-oxygen.so and lib/kde4/plugins/styles/oxygen.so if they exist in the KDE install prefix.

HAL

Tip

You can use qdbusviewer to see if you have org.freedesktop.hal. If not, you might need a newer version of hal. If you have org.freedesktop.hal, you probably don't need to, and don't want to, roll your own HAL.

If your system requires you to build a newer version of HAL, there's a decent chance you'll need to build other stuff as well, some of which may not be straight forward. Since this should only be required for older distros, instructions are on a separate page.

kdesupport

Warning

Don't forget to read the Setting Up The Environment section first.

There are several libraries that KDE applications rely on in the kdesupport module. This includes Strigi and Soprano for file metadata and search, QImageBlitz for image manipulation needed in kdebase, eigen for visual effects in applications such as Kalzium, taglib for music players and qca for some cryptographic needs.

Strigi itself has a few dependencies as well: you will need the libraries and headers for libz, libbz2, openssl (libcrypto or libssl), libclucene (=0.9.16; version 0.9.17 does not work), and either libxml2 or libexpat.

The Recipe

cs # cs is not a typo
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kdesupport/
cd kdesupport
cmakekde

What's Happening

We change to the base source directory (line 1). We download the sources in kdesupport using subversion (line 2), go into the new ~/kde/src/kdesupport directory (line 3), and commence the build (line 4). This will leave us in the kdesupport build directory after the build is completed.

Troubleshooting

If you get

  cmakekde: command not found

then you have to go manualy into the kdesupport directory in ~ and execute the command cmakekde. if this still doesnt work, then something is wrong with your bashrc.

If you get

CMake Error: This project requires some variables to be set,
and cmake can not find them.
Please set the following variables:
LIBXML2_INCLUDE_DIR (ADVANCED)

you should install the development package for libxml2.

If you get

CMake Error: Could NOT find REDLAND

then you need librdf from the Redland. If your distribution does not provide the librdf package, you can download the source there: http://download.librdf.org/source/ and build it. (Gentoo users: The ebuild for librdf is named dev-libs/redland)

If you get

Fetching external item into 'kdesupport/admin'
Error validating server certificate for 'https://...'

see Using Subversion with KDE

If you get

FILE cannot create directory: /usr/lib[64]/qt4/plugins/crypto. Maybe need administrative privileges.
- - -
make: *** [install] Error 255

take a second look in the .bashrc file described above, are paths correct? Alternatively, you may see this error if you decided to use a distribution installed version of qt4 and skipped the Qt install above. Either install qt-copy as describe above, or "sudo make install". If you use "sudo make install", make sure you that you change the ownership back to your user for some of the ~/kde subdirectories that were effected by using sudo (ie. "sudo chown -R kde-devel:kde-devel ~/kde").

kdelibs

We can now move on to building KDE's base libraries.

The Recipe

cd   
cs # cs is not a typo
mkdir KDE && cd KDE
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs
cd kdelibs
cmakekde

What's Happening

We change to the base source directory (line 1) then make and go into the KDE directory (line 2). We download the sources for kdelibs using subversion (line 3), go into the new ~/kde/src/KDE/kdelibs directory (line 4), and commence the build (line 5). This will leave us in the kdelibs build directory after the build is completed.

Tip

There might be missing dependencies on your system! They are easily overlooked in the output of cmakekde. You might want to do a cmake $KDE_SRC/KDE/MODULE_NAME prior to compiling any kde modules (like kdelibs, kdepimlibs etc.)

Additional KDE-specific CMake modules

There are additional CMake modules in kdelibs/cmake/modules/ that are necessary for building KDE4 applications. These will be installed for you when kdelibs itself is installed.

Troubleshooting

If you have problems compiling kdelibs, first make sure the software in the Required Software section above is installed and works. Other possible hints include:

• If the cmakekde command fails stating that CMake requires an out of source build directory, remove ~/kde/src/KDE/kdelibs/CMakeCache.txt, and try again.

If cmakekde still gives the same error then try this

cd
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$KDEDIR \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull \
-DKDE4_BUILD_TESTS=ON \
~/kde/src/KDE/kdelibs
make
make install

• If you received an error stating "Please create a separate build directory and run 'cmake path_to_kdelibs [options]' there.", then you need to change to your build directory before running cmakekde. (e.g cs KDE/kdelibs && cb && cmakekde) If the message stays, run 'svn status' in the kdelibs directory and remove all files labeled with '?'.
• If Qt wasn't found or the wrong version of Qt was found, make sure that the qmake from the Qt you need is the first qmake in the path.
• If the problems persist, try the CMake make-option --keep-going.
• Here you need the libungif library, otherwise you will get an error message like "Could NOT find GIF".
• Qt-4.3 upgrade: if you get a link error in kjsembed talking about QScriptEngine, edit CMakeCache.txt in kdelibs and remove the lines that talk about QT_QTUITOOLS_LIBRARY, then type make again (that static library has a new dependency, and the cmake code that adds it needs to run).
• if you get CMake Error: KDE Requires Qt to be built with SSL support

, install openssl-devel, remove CMakeCache.txt and re-compile QT.

• if you get kdelibs/kimgio/ico.cpp:188: undefined reference to `QImage::jumpTable()' it means you compiled QT without QT3 support(no, linking to a true QT3 install won't work)

kdepimlibs

After kdelibs, but before kdebase, you need to build and install kdepimlibs.

The Recipe

cs KDE # cs is not a typo
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdepimlibs
cd kdepimlibs
cmakekde

What's Happening

We go into the KDE source directory (line 1), download the source code for kdepimlibs using subversion (line 2) and then go into the new ~/kde/src/KDE/kdepimlibs directory (line 3). We then commence the build (line 4). This will leave us in the kdepimlibs build directory after the build is completed.

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble compiling kdepimlibs:

• the cmakekde command may require a later version of the gpgme library. This is available from the project's web site: http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/download/index.html - please note that the build of gpgme also requires libgpg-error, also available from the same location. Both libraries are installed by the "./configure", "make" and "sudo make install" sequence, with the gpgme library configured with the additional "--with-gpg-error-prefix" parameter. You may need to overwrite your existing "/usr/bin/gpgme-config" file with the newer version for the kdepimlibs to pick up the new install.
• if you get the error "cannot find -lpth" from /usr/bin/ld, then make sure you have The GNU Portable Threads (libpth-dev for Debian).

kdebase

kdebase is divided into three parts:

• apps

This contains applications like Dolphin or KWrite.

• runtime

This contains things needed by every application at runtime, like icons. It is a required dependency for each KDE application, so you have to compile and install this.

• workspace

This contains things specific to the KDE desktop, like Plasma or the window manager. Most stuff here depends on X11. You only need it if you want to build a full KDE desktop.

You can build all of kdebase at once, which is described in the recipe below. If you only want to build kdebase-runtime, which is the only requirement, you can replace cd kdebase with cd kdebase/runtime in the recipe below.

The Recipe

cs KDE # cs is not a typo
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdebase
cd kdebase
cmakekde

Troubleshooting

If you have troubles compiling kdebase:

• Make sure you have the libxss headers installed. (Usually you got undefined references on xscreensaver objects if you do not have those headers)
• which meinproc has to deliver /home/kde-devel/kde/bin/meinproc
• if cmakekde can not find the path of kdepimlibs, edit the file $KDE_BUILD/KDE/kdebase/CMakeCache.txt and manually set KDEPIMLIBS_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH=$KDE_BUILD/kdepimlibs
• if you get an error saying "Please set the following variables: X11_XTest_LIB (ADVANCED)", install the devel package of Xtst. On some systems, this is packaged separately from xext and called x11proto-xext-dev or libxtst-dev. You may also need to remove the CMakeCache.txt file in the build dir after installing the package.
• the same for "X11_Xinerama_LIB (ADVANCED)" where you will need the devel package for xinerama.
• if you get an error complaining about a missing variable X11_Xrandr_LIB, you need the devel package for libxrandr (libxrandr-devel on ubuntu-systems)
• if you get the error "Please set the following variables: FONTCONFIG_INCLUDE_DIR, FONTCONFIG_LIBRARIES (ADVANCED)", then you need to install the libfontconfig headers
• if you get the error "CMake Error: This project requires some variables to be set, and cmake can not find them. Please set the following variables: KMETADATA_LIBRARIES", you need to install soprano from kdesupport and to rebuild kdelibs
• if you get the error "‘XserverRegion’ does not name a type" make sure you have libxcomposite headers installed (libxcomposite-dev in ubuntu)
• if you get the error "CMake Error: This project requires some variables to be set, and cmake can not find them. Please set the following variables: QT_QTOPENGL_LIBRARY (ADVANCED) ", try editing CMakeCache.txt and setting QT_QTOPENGL_LIBRARY:FILEPATH=/home/kde-devel/qt-copy/lib/libQtOpenGL.so

• if you get messages as "KDE4_INSTALL_HANDBOOK() is deprecated. Remove it please. Now all is done in KDE4_CREATE_HANDBOOK." then, either find the files containing the offending line and comment it out manually, or run the following script in ~/kde/src/KDE/kdebase: macros_corrector.sh. It will just REMOVE the line that has "kde4_create_handbook" in it from all the found files.

Running KDE 4 programs

You can now run KDE 4 programs (e.g. kwrite) by typing:

ssh -X kde-devel@localhost
kwrite 

Troubleshooting

• If you get

KUniqueApplication: Cannot find the D-Bus session server

check if you can access the display, e.g. type

xclock

and see if a clock appears on the screen.

• If you get something like

Error: standard icon theme "oxygen" not found!

ASSERT: "!isEmpty()" in file /home/kde-devel/qt-copy/include/QtCore/../../src/corelib/tools/qlist.h, line 245
Aborted (core dumped)

You need to install kdebase - see above. It is enough to install the "runtime" directory from kdebase.

Generating local API documentation

Although the API documentation for KDE is available online at api.kde.org, it is sometimes useful to have it on your own disk, for example when you want to use KDevelop for browsing the documentation or when you are not able to be online all the time.

Be aware that generating the API documentation can take several hours and takes almost half a gigabyte of diskspace. The generation is handled by a script in kdelibs/doc/api, you need doxygen to be able to run it.

To build the API documentation for kdelibs, type the following:

cs KDE/kdelibs # cs is not a typo
$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/api/doxygen.sh \
--doxdatadir=$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/common .

Repeat for other modules as desired.

cd <module home>
$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/api/doxygen.sh \
--doxdatadir=$KDE_SRC/KDE/kdelibs/doc/common .

Another, even easier method involves downloading this Doxyfile to your local system. Then simply change directory to where you want to create the documentation and run % doxygen /path/to/Doxyfile Then review the file doxygen.log to see the doxygen errors and warnings. You'll find the actual documentation in the apidocs subdirectory.

Staying up to date

In order to keep the kde4 installation up to date, each of the modules installed should be updated periodically. As Monday is the day for big changes in kdelibs, Tuesday may be the best day to do this. For each module checked out, run svn up and make.

For example: cs kdesupport # cs is not a typo svn up cb # cb is not a typo make -j2 VERBOSE=1 && make install

General troubleshooting

What can happen over time, after some svn up commands, is that some of the tools used in the KDE build chain change their output format. For example, kcfg files are read by kconfig_compiler to produce configuration dialogs. CMake cannot detect those changes, and the compilation might fail. A workaround is to always force a re-generation of all such files:

find $KDE_SRC/KDE/kdebase -name "*.kcfg" | xargs touch

The same applies to ui files as produced by Qt designer.

Success!

You are now ready to start building other svn modules in the same fashion as you built kdebase, running and testing KDE4 or writing your own patches and applications.

See the Set up KDE 4 for development tutorial for how to start KDE 4 applications and how to use KDevelop to work on them.