Craft

Craft is an open source meta build system and package manager. It manages dependencies and builds libraries and applications from source, on Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD.

Setting up Craft

Start crafting on Windows

Start crafting on Mac

Start crafting on FreeBSD

Common Craft commands

Installing a package and its dependencies

craft packagename

Updating an installed package: Once you have packagename built, type:

craft -i packagename

Updating Craft itself:

craft craft

Updating the blueprints:

 craft --fetch craft-blueprints-kde

Advanced tips

Hardcode versions of packages

To build a non default version, append a line to $craftRoot/etc/CraftSettings.ini of form:

[BlueprintVersions]
category/packagename = branch

For example, to install master branch of kdevelop, the line to be appended should look like:

[BlueprintVersions]
frameworks/khtml = master

Or if you want to hardcode the version of a "meta" group containing a version.ini:

[BlueprintVersions]
Qt5 = 5.9

Finding packages

To find the package you want to install, run this:

craft --search packagename

The second line of the output will be of form: category/packagename

Using the Qt SDK

This will skip all Qt packages and use the official Qt builds instead. It will work fine for most CMake based recipes but definitely cause problems with QMake based projects. You will of course also miss all patches we usually apply to Qt. This is only recommended when you know what you are doing and you won't get support for in our channel.

To activate the SDK mode adapt the [QtSDK] section in your etc/kdesettings.ini to something like:

   [QtSDK]
   ## Whether to use prebuild Qt binaries.
   Enabled = True
   ## The path to the Qt sdk.
   Path = C:\Qt
   ## The version of Qt.
   Version = 5.9
   ## The compiler version, if you are not sure what to use, have a look into the derectory set in QtSDK/Path.
   ## The compiler must be of the same type as General/KDECOMPILER.
   ## If you are using mingw please make sure you have installed the mingw using the Qt installer.
   Compiler = msvc2017_64

Troubleshooting

If a package fails to build, you'll be greeted with something like:

 ...
 craft warning: while running make cmd: jom
 craft warning: Action: compile for libs/qt5/qtbase FAILED
 *** Craft all failed: all of libs/qtbase failed after 0:07:25 ***
 craft error: fatal error: package libs/qtbase all failed

In order to figure out what failed, grep the command line output above for errors.

Or have a look at the log file located in $HOME/.craft (%USERPROFILE%\.craft on Windows) which will contain much more details.

Search for "error", or "error:" in the file.

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Getting in Touch

• IRC: #kde-windows on freenode (join via web chat: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=kde-windows)

• Report bugs

• Mailing list: [email protected] (subscribe, archives)