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/master/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\>

Common Craft commands

Installing a package and its dependencies: Simply run
```
craft packagename
```
Updating an installed package: Once you have packagename built, type
```
craft -i packagename
```
to update packagename.
Updating Craft:
```
craft craft
```

Advanced tips

To build a non default version, append a line to kderoot/etc/kdesettings.ini of form:

category/packagename = branch

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

extragear/kdevelop = master

To find the category of the package you want to install, run this in powershell:

craft --search packagename

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

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 %USERPROFILE%\.craft which will contain much more details.

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