Guidelines and HOWTOs/Build from source

Build requirements

This section provides information about hard (required) and optional software packages needed to build the KDE Framework.

Dependencies

• deb-based distributions (Debian, Kubuntu...):

$ sudo apt-get build-dep qtbase5-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev libxslt-dev libxml2-dev shared-mime-info oxygen-icon-theme libgif-dev libvlc-dev libvlccore-dev doxygen gperf bzr libxapian-dev fontforge libgcrypt20-dev

• openSUSE: All the necessary dependencies:

$ sudo zypper si -d libqt5-qtbase
$ sudo zypper in libbz2-devel libxslt-devel libxml2-devel shared-mime-info oxygen-icon-theme giflib-devel vlc-devel doxygen gstreamer-0_10-devel gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-devel docbook-xml-slides docbook-xsl-stylesheets xcb-util-keysyms-devel perl-JSON boost-devel libxcb-devel libXrender-devel xcb-util-wm-devel xcb-util-devel xcb-util-image-devel gettext-tools
$ sudo zypper in gtk3-devel # for kde-gtk-config
$ sudo zypper in grantlee5 # for kdevplatform
$ sudo zypper in libkdcraw-devel lcms2-devel # for gwenview

• Fedora: All the dependencies used for building frameworks can be installed by running:

$ sudo yum-builddep qt phonon-backend-vlc phonon-backend-gstreamer
$ sudo yum install gcc-c++ ruby doxygen git bzr flex bison gperf socat boost-devel bzip2-devel libxslt-devel libxml2-devel shared-mime-info oxygen-icon-theme giflib-devel xcb-util-keysyms-devel perl-JSON perl-Pod-Usage "*xcb*-devel" perl-XML-Parser NetworkManager-glib-devel xapian-core-devel libxkbcommon-devel libxkbcommon-x11-devel  systemd-devel libwayland-cursor-devel libwayland-server-devel libepoxy-devel gtk3-devel sane-backends-devel libcanberra-devel libusb-devel libxkbfile-devel fontforge-devel libical-devel gpgme-devel cyrus-sasl-devel openldap-devel

• Arch Linux: All the dependencies used for building frameworks can be installed by running:

$ sudo pacman -Sy phonon-qt5 qt5-webkit qt5-script qt5-svg qt5-tools qt5-x11extras enchant jasper openexr libutempter docbook-xsl shared-mime-info giflib libxss upower udisks2 bzr git doxygen perl-json perl-libwww
$ <your_AUR_helper> kf5-akonadi-git

Qt 5

Qt 5 (http://qt-project.org/) is the base of KDE software. You can either make an own Qt 5 build or use the pre-built development packages of your distribution. The next two sections show both ways. Choose one of them.

Either: Make own Qt5 build

• PRO: full control and debugging capabilities
• CON: takes long to compile on the first time, might be an additional source of errors for beginners

To build all of qt5 execute:

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/qt/qt5.git --branch 5.3
cd qt5
./init-repository
./configure -prefix $PWD/qtbase -opensource -confirm-license -nomake tests -nomake examples -dbus -no-separate-debug-info -xcb -qpa xcb -no-gtkstyle -developer-build
make

To update qt5 later:

git pull
git submodule sync
git submodule update --recursive

If you saw changes (i.e. qt5.git got updated since last time),

./configure [...same as above...]
make
echo $?    # you should make extra sure that 'make' didn't abort with an error, especially when using -j

Experimental and not officially supported: if you don't have enough time and disk space for all of qt5, you could restrict yourself to separate checkouts of qtbase.git, qtsvg.git, qtx11extras.git, qtscript.git and qttools.git, this is enough to build frameworks/* (but not enough for plasma-framework).

NOTE for ArchLinux users: qtwebkit and qtwebengine use Python to generate some files, but they use Python 2.x syntax. So you have to make python pointing to /usr/bin/python2, to do that see the Arch Wiki.

Or: use pre-built development packages

• PRO: faster to get started, one source of errors less

Note that the Qt version currently must be >= 5.3

1) openSUSE 13.1:

• add the repository http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Qt53/openSUSE_13.1/
• install packages:

$ sudo zypper install libqt5-qttools libgypsy0 libqt5-creator libqt5-linguist libqt5-qtbase-common-devel libqt5-qtbase-debugsource libqt5-qtbase-devel libqt5-qtbase-doc libqt5-qtbase-examples libqt5-qtdeclarative-debugsource libqt5-qtdeclarative-devel libqt5-qtdeclarative-examples libqt5-qtdeclarative-tools libqt5-qtdoc libqt5-qtgraphicaleffects libqt5-qtimageformats libqt5-qtimageformats-debugsource libqt5-qtimageformats-devel libqt5-qtmultimedia-devel libqt5-qtmultimedia-examples libqt5-qtquick1-devel libqt5-qtquickcontrols libqt5-qtscript-devel libqt5-qtscript-examples libqt5-qtsvg-devel libqt5-qttools-debugsource libqt5-qttools-devel libqt5-qtx11extras-devel libqt5-qtxmlpatterns-devel libqt5-qtxmlpatterns-examples libQt5CLucene5 libQt5Concurrent-devel libQt5Concurrent5 libQt5Core-devel libQt5Core5 libQt5DBus-devel libQt5DBus5 libQt5Declarative5 libQt5Designer5 libQt5DesignerComponents5 libQt5Gui-devel libQt5Gui5 libQt5Help5 libQt5Multimedia5 libQt5Network-devel libQt5Network5 libQt5OpenGL-devel libQt5OpenGL5 libQt5Positioning5 libQt5PrintSupport-devel libQt5PrintSupport5 libQt5Script5 libQt5Sensors5 libQt5Sql-devel libQt5Sql5 libQt5Sql5-mysql libQt5Sql5-postgresql libQt5Sql5-sqlite libQt5Sql5-unixODBC libQt5Svg5 libQt5Test-devel libQt5Test5 libQt5WebKit5 libQt5WebKitWidgets5 libQt5Widgets-devel libQt5Widgets5 libQt5X11Extras5 libQt5Xml-devel libQt5Xml5 libQt5XmlPatterns5 libQtQuick5 Qt5WebKitWidgets-devel libqt5-qtbase-private-headers-devel

(these might be too much packages but with those the KF5 build worked)

2) Debian

$ sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev libqt5x11extras5-dev qtscript5-dev qttools5-dev libqt5svg5-dev libqt5xmlpatterns5-dev

3) Other distributions: yet to be documented.

Build KDE Frameworks and its dependencies

Git remote prefix

Let's setup a "kde:" prefix for git commands. Add the following text to your ~/.gitconfig:

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

Clone kdesrc-build

First you need kdesrc-build, it can be done with the following commands:

mkdir -p extragear/utils
git clone kde:kdesrc-build extragear/utils/kdesrc-build
ln -s extragear/utils/kdesrc-build/kdesrc-build .

Download the configuration file

At this point,

1. download http://www.davidfaure.fr/kde/kf5-qt5-kdesrc-buildrc into your source dir
2. rename it to kdesrc-buildrc

You can use this command:

wget "http://www.davidfaure.fr/kde/kf5-qt5-kdesrc-buildrc" -O "kdesrc-buildrc"

Adjust the paths

Take a look at those lines in the configuration file you've downloaded:

  # note that the qtdir line is not needed and can be commented out
  #  when using distro installed Qt 5 packages
  qtdir /d/qt/5/kde/qtbase
  source-dir /d/kde/src/5
  build-dir /d/kde/build/5
  kdedir /d/kde/inst/kde_frameworks

and adjust the paths the way you want.

• qtdir = Where Qt 5 is installed, or qtbase build dir if using uninstalled
• source-dir = where KDE Frameworks 5 sources should be downloaded
• build-dir = where KDE Frameworks 5 should be built
• kde-dir = your KDE Frameworks 5 installation directory

Note

The value of kde-dir/share must be included in the environment variable XDG_DATA_DIRS or otherwise the build will fail. kdesrc-build should handle this for you.

Note

The Qt dir must be included in the environment variable CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH otherwise kdesrc-build will fail to configure most modules.

Run kdesrc-build

Note

Note that this script uses GIT and Bazaar to download the sources, so ensure you have both installed.

You just have to run ./kdesrc-build to build the KDE Frameworks. It is the preferred way of building KDE Frameworks.

Note

kdesrc-build will only pick up the kdesrc-buildrc file you downloaded and edited above if it is in the same directory you run kdesrc-build from. If you save it to ~/.kdesrc-buildrc, however, it will be used no matter where you run kdesrc-build from.

If you want you can also do the work by hand following the detailed instructions: Frameworks/Building/Details.

Example for openSUSE 13.1 with pre-built Qt 5 packages installed via zypper:

# directory structure looks like this now:
# src/
#  extragear/
#    utils/
#      kde-srcbuild/
#  kdesrc-build [symlink to extragear/utils/kde-srcbuild/kdesrc-build]
#
$ cd <your kf5 src dir where kdesrc-build symlink is located>
$ export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/lib64/cmake/Qt5
$ ./kdesrc-build

Analyse and fix build errors

If kdesrc-build shows you red module names with messages like "Unable to configure plasma-mediacenter with CMake!" or "Unable to build kdepim!", you have to start troubleshooting:

• The latest build log is written to

  src/log/latest/<module-name>/

• In case of error there will be an error.log file with useful information. You will see that often there is a only build dependency missing.

Use Kubuntu CI

Kubuntu CI (replaces Project Neon 5) provides packages of KDE Git master for KDE Frameworks and Plasma 5. Install them on your Kubuntu system to work with KDE Git.

Runtime setup

To use your new KF5 install prefix (let's call it $KF5) :

export KF5=<path to your intended frameworks install directory>
export QTDIR=<path to your qt5 install dir, or qtbase build dir if using uninstalled>
export XDG_DATA_DIRS=$KF5/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS:/usr/share
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=$KF5/etc/xdg:$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS:/etc/xdg
export PATH=$KF5/bin:$QTDIR/bin:$PATH
export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$KF5/lib/plugins:$KF5/lib64/plugins:$KF5/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/plugins:$QTDIR/plugins:$QT_PLUGIN_PATH
#   (lib64 instead of lib, on OpenSUSE and similar)
export QML2_IMPORT_PATH=$KF5/lib/qml:$KF5/lib64/qml:$KF5/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qml:$QTDIR/qml
export QML_IMPORT_PATH=$QML2_IMPORT_PATH
export KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5
export KDE_FULL_SESSION=true

Note that LD_LIBRARY_PATH isn't set. You shouldn't set it, the builtin rpath works magic instead, and if you set it you'll have issues when running tools that use uninstalled libs while building frameworks (e.g. meinproc, kconfig_compiler...)

To use separate user settings for KF5:

export XDG_DATA_HOME=$HOME/.local5/share
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/.config5
export XDG_CACHE_HOME=$HOME/.cache5

To be able to compile other stuff on top of KF5:

export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$KF5:$CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH

To get more information out of qDebug statements (i.e. make it more like kDebug) :

export QT_MESSAGE_PATTERN='%{appname}(%{pid})/%{category} %{function}: %{message}'

or even better, to get colors:

c=`echo -e "\033"`
export QT_MESSAGE_PATTERN="%{appname}(%{pid})/(%{category}) ${c}[31m%{if-debug}${c}[34m%{endif}%{function}${c}[0m: %{message}"
unset c

Don't bother with KDEDIR and KDEHOME etc. this stuff isn't used anymore.

Running unit tests

Unit tests are ran from the build dir of each framework, you should first cd into it.

You need a separate DBus session because the dbus server needs to have the right value of XDG_DATA_DIRS, in order to find $KF5/share/dbus-1/services for starting services (e.g. kded5).

eval `dbus-launch`
kdeinit5
make test

Warning: never start a KDE 4 application in this separate DBus session, it would conflict with your running Plasma 4 desktop. Note: KDE_FULL_SESSION=true is needed to make sure that the correct QPA will be loaded.

Many of the tests require an X server, and will pop up windows briefly. An easy way to allow these tests to run without interfering with your normal X session is to do

xvfb-run -s '-screen 0 1024x768x24' make test

(the -s argument tells Xvfb to set the first screen to be 1024x768 pixels, with a depth of 24; at least one test requires a depth greater than 8). In this case, if you also ensure DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS is not set, the tests should not find your existing D-Bus session, and instead launch a new D-Bus instance.

Note that the KWindowSystem tests require a NETWM-compatible window manager to be running. One way to do this is to create a script to run such a window manager, followed by whatever is passed to it. For example, if you have the window manager awesome installed, you could create a script called awesome-run as follows:

#!/bin/sh
awesome &
exec "$@"

and then run the tests as

xvfb-run -s '-screen 0 1024x768x24' /path/to/awesome-run make test

If you want to publish your test results, instead of "make test" run

make Experimental

The test results will appear on http://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=<projectname>

Troubleshooting

Icon theme was changed

Problem: After working a bit with KF5 applications your regular KDE icon theme might be changed from oxygen to breeze.

Solution: see https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=25032: Open "Icons - KDE Control Module" and change the theme back to Oxygen.