Guidelines and HOWTOs/Build from source/Windows

Craft is a tool to build the sources and its third-party requirements. It is the easy way to build software.

Setting up craft

Installing python

While Craft is capable of installing a embedded Python version sufficient for most packages, we recommend a full installation of Python. The current version is 3.6. Download Python 3.6+

Setting up a powershell

Powershell is required to be at least version 5.0. If you're running Windows 10 you most probably won't need to update Powershell.

You can check the version with $PSVersionTable.PSVersion .

Download Powershell

Setting up a compiler

Currently Craft supports both the MinGW and Microsoft Visual Studio (msvc) compiler. While MinGW can be installed by Craft, Visual Studio must be installed independently by the user.

Direct X SDK

If you are using the MinGW compiler, in order to compile the Qt5 qtbase package you will also need to install the Microsoft DirectX SDK. Make sure to open a new command line window after the installation for the environment variables to be set.

Installing Craft

Start a powershell environment.
Allow execution of powershell scripts.

 Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned

Install Craft and folow the instructions

iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KDE/craft/2017.05/setup/install_craft.ps1'))

Using Craft

To use Craft you need to start a Powershell window, point that to KDEROOT\craft and run the initalization script. For example:

C:\KDEROOT\craft\kdeenv.ps1

This tells Craft about your environment settings (e.g. paths). It will load your configuration from KDEROOT\etc\kdesettings.ini. If there are any error messages Craft will not work as expected. The output should look similar to this one (of course with your paths):

PS C:\kderoot\craft>.\kdeenv.ps1
KDEROOT     : C:\kderoot\
KDECOMPILER : msvc2015
KDESVNDIR   : C:\kderoot\download\svn
KDEGITDIR   : C:\kderoot\download\git
DOWNLOADDIR : C:\kderoot\download
PYTHONPATH  : C:\kderoot\python

PS C:\kderoot\>

Using Craft with Qt Creator

To compile from within Qt Creator, I need to set up a kit. This is an example for mingw64.

Add a cmake if none is set: R:\dev-utils\cmake\bin\cmake.exe
Add a debugger: R:\mingw64\bin\gdb.exe
Add a C++ compiler and a C compiler. Both: R:\mingw64\bin\gcc.exe
- Ensure that the ABI is correctly set
Add a Qt: R:\bin\qmake.exe
Add a kit with all of the above
Use the kit on a project