Calligra/Building Calligra on Windows

Note

These instructions are a work in progress, being based on the Linux Build instructions, there are some sections which need updating.

These instructions are for Unix and similar operating systems.

See also:

• Nightly Builds
• Developing With...
• Pages about compiling KDE software for Windows
• kde's git infrastructure manual
• KDE and Git for developers
• git crash course

Note: the 4.7 branch of emerge is no longer usable. Use the 4.8 or master branch. Those branches need Python 3.x. You also need 7za.exe instead of 7z.exe in the path.

Preparation

Before you begin, you will need to have a minimal set of software installed on your PC:

• Python 2.7 (x86, not 64-bit)
• Git
• Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 (Windows 7 with .NET Framework 4)
• KDE on Windows' emerge tool, kde-4.8 branch

First you will need to make sure that you have Git installed on your PC in order to be able to clone the KDE Windows emerge repository. Be sure to switch to the kde-4.7 branch.

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/emerge.git
cd emerge
git checkout kde-4.8
mkdir ..\etc
copy kdesettings-example.bat ..\etc\kdesettings.bat

You will need to make the following changes to etc/kdesettings.bat:

• Update KDEROOT
• Set KDECOMPILER=msvc2010
• Update WINDOWSSDKDIR to point to your installation of the Windows SDK
• Set EMERGE_USE_SHORT_PATH=1
• Set PYTHONPATH (default assumes in Program Files)
• Set EMERGE_SOURCEONLY=True

One you have done this, you should navigate to the emerge directory and call

kdeenv

This sets up the development environment that you will need to use in order to build the KDE libraries, their dependencies and Calligra.

In order to install the bare minimum set up of KDE libraries, you will need to run a series of calls to emerge, which will take some time:

emerge qt
emerge kdelibs
emerge kde-runtime

Users familiar with development on Linux platforms may also wish to install another couple of libraries

emerge coreutils
emerge grep

There are some additional libraries required by Calligra, again emerge is used to install them:

emerge lcms2
emerge eigen2
emerge boost
emerge okular
emerge exiv2
emerge soprano
emerge librdf-src

Depending on your requirements, there are some additional libraries that may be useful

emerge libwpd    // Wordperfect document support  
emerge libwpg    // Wordperfect graphics support

Recommended setup

Here is recommendation of a directory structure:

C:\kderoot

KDE on Windows root directory

From your %USERPROFILE% directory (assuming you will be the only local user)

kde4\src\

source code

kde4\build\calligra

directory that Calligra will be built in

kde4\inst\

directory that Calligra will be installed in

The build directory is needed because you cannot build Calligra inside the source directory; the source and build directory have to be separated.

You can create this structure by opening a command prompt (cmd.exe) and typing:

cd %USERPROFILE% 
mkdir kde4
mkdir kde4\build
mkdir kde4\build\calligra
mkdir kde4\inst
mkdir kde4\src

Getting the source code

As Windows support is still being improved, it is recommended that you use the development version. If you require stability, it is recommended that you take advantage of the nightly builds.

The latest development version of Calligra is 3.1.0 Alpha; developers always refer to it as to Master. Once tested and released, it will become the new current stable version 3.1.

To retrieve the source code from Git you have to use the following setup:

Add the following text to %USERPROFILE%\.gitconfig:

[url "git://anongit.kde.org/"]
    insteadOf = kde:
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
    pushInsteadOf = kde:
[core]
    autocrlf=false

Then execute

$ git clone kde:calligra

By using the kde: prefix, read access will automatically happen over Git, and authenticated SSH is only required for pushes.

Note that pushing your changes will only work if you have a KDE developer identity (https://identity.kde.org/register.php).

This will create a 'calligra' subdirectory with the complete source tree.

Build Calligra

From your home directory, navigate to the build\calliga subdirectory and execute cmake to configure the project for building with the following lines:

cd kde4\build\calligra
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=..\..\inst ..\..\src\calligra -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=%EMERGE_BUILDTYPE% -DTINY=off -DBUILD_active=off -DBUILD_mobile=off -DBUILD_kexi=off

Here we are telling cmake that:

• We want to install Calligra into ~/kde4/inst
• The source files are located at ~/kde4/src/calligra
• We are building to the same type (RelWithDebInfo / Debug) as used to build the Qt and KDE libraries, by reading the value of EMERGE_BUILDTYPE
• We are selectively disabling some portions of the build with the -DBUILD_xxxx=on|off commands. 'active' and 'mobile' are not applicable to the desktop build, while flow and kexi (at the time of writing) were still undergoing testing on the platform.

Note

You can selectively build applications by using the -DBUILD_application=off command to disable building of those you do not want. If you have a full cmake install, you can use the cmake-gui application to let you make changes to the configuration.

Then, to build Calligra, type:

jom

Note

jom is a multi-core port of nmake. By default it uses all of the cores on the machine, buy you can specify the number to use with the -j# parameter. e.g. jom -j2 would force it to use 2 processes

This will take a while, once it has completed, type this command to install the software:

jom  install

Please follow the Running Calligra Applications instructions before trying to run an application.

Running Calligra applications

There are two options to make the Calligra applications available for running.

• Option 1: Being able to run Calligra applications from the command line. If you have installed Calligra in a different prefix than KDElibs (which was recommended in this document), you may want to set the following environment variable:

set KDEDIRS=\path\to\install;%KDEDIRS%
set PATH=\path\to\install\bin;%PATH%
set KDEHOME=\path\to\a\config\dir

And then you need to execute:

kbuildsycoca4

For example for the recommended directory structure:

set KDEDIRS=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\inst;%KDEDIRS%
set PATH=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\inst\bin;%PATH%
set KDEHOME=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\.kde

Here we are setting KDEHOME to be saved

• Option 2: Being able to run Calligra applications from the menu or by clicking on desktop icons. Instead of using KDEDIRS, you can add these lines to $HOME/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals file using text editor:

[Directories]
prefixes=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\inst

And then you need to execute:

update-mime-database %KDEROOT%\share\mime
kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental

The advantage of this is that KDE4 will always look for the services where Calligra is installed.

Updating the already built software

If the source code has been checked out, it is possible to update the source code with newly added changes and build again. Usually only changing parts will be built, so this operation would be faster than building the source code from scratch.

Type:

cd %USERPROFILE%\kde4\src\calligra
git pull
cd %USERPROFILE%\kde4\build\calligra
jom
jom install

Executing unit tests

To be able to execute unit tests, you need to explicitely enable them in the build configuration. To do so, set the KDE4_BUILD_TESTS variable to "ON", either by issuing the command in the build directory:

cd $HOME/kde4/build/calligra
cmake -DKDE4_BUILD_TESTS=ON .

Or you can run cmake-gui in the buld directory and set KDE4_BUILD_TESTS to "on".

It is then recommended that before running the tests, you first execute

jom install

You can then run the test by executing:

jom test

or individually in the tests directories.

CMake Build Options

When you enter your build directory, you can type "cmake-gui ." to see many build options, e.g. you can turn off compilation of apps you don't want - you can save time when compiling.

Here is list for Krita related options:

• HAVE_MEMORY_LEAK_TRACKER [On/Off] - You can turn on compilation of the tool in krita which detects memory leak. If you want to help debug Krita memory usage, it is useful. Otherwise you just slow down your Krita.
• HAVE_BACKTRACE_SUPPORT [On/Off] - It is related to the memory leak tool. If you activate, you will be able to see code path which leads to memory leak.

Resources

• Useful hints for who wants to hack on Calligra
• opengtl debugging, or turning it off
• Status of Calligra build on Windows (msvc 2008, mingw)

Possible issues

Calligra apps don't start

If the Calligra applications do not start properly, or you see the window flash up then disappear, then you need to check the Running Calligra Applications section earlier and make sure you've run update-mime-database and kbuildsycoca4.

You can get some additional insight by installing DebugView, which will let you see warnings and error messages reported by the programs. This is available on Microsoft Technet