Setting up dependencies

On some distros you will need to install some development packages. Some package managers also feature a command which will automatically fetch the dependencies for you. If yours does not, you will need to procure the dependencies by yourself, in which case you can install/ build those yourself.

Ubuntu
- Go to /etc/apt/source.list and enable the source repositories.
- Run the following commands:
```
# apt update
# apt-get build-dep kdeconnect
```

openSUSE
- Run the following commands:
```
# zypper si -d kdeconnect-kde
```

Arch Linux
- Run the following commands:
```
# pacman -S kdeconnect
```

Gentoo
- Run the following commands:
```
# emerge --ask kdeconnect
```
- On Gentoo, you may need to enable pulseaudio and bluetooth USE flags for respective features.

Fedora

Run the following commands:

# dnf builddep kde-connect
# dnf install qt5-qtquickcontrols2-devel

Build and install kdeconnect-kde

Next, uninstall the distribution-provided version of kdeconnect before continuing, otherwise, you might end up in a confusing situation

where some plugins are being provided by the system-installed version and others are coming from your new build.

If you want to build KDE Connect yourself, you'll first need to grab the code from git.
```
git clone https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-kde.git
```
Note: if you plan to contribute code to KDE Connect, you're advised to set up your clone for contributing.

If you intend to develop KDE Connect or experience a crash and are asked to give a backtrace, build KDE Connect with debugging symbols. Do this by adding the -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug flag before the two dots at the end of the cmake command. For example:
```
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/kde-prefix -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
```

Installing to ~/kde-prefix

For development, it is recommended to install to your home directory and test changes using prefix.sh. This gives a faster development cycle and avoids clobbering your system-installed version with a potentially unstable WIP version.

To configure:

cd kdeconnect-kde
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/kde-prefix ..

To build and install:
```
make -j$(nproc) install
```
To run an executable, for example, kdeconnectd:
```
source build/prefix.sh
killall kdeconnectd; ~/kde-prefix/lib64/libexec/kdeconnectd
```
The daemon is in an obscure location. Other executables, such as the SMS app or the settings app, are on the path provided by prefix.sh, and can be found in ~/kde-prefix/bin, i.e., for example, to test changes to the SMS app, do:
```
source build/prefix.sh
killall kdeconnect-sms; ~/kde-prefix/bin/kdeconnect-sms
```

Installing to /

If you want to daily-drive the latest source code of KDE Connect, you can install it to the system. This is not recommended for day-to-day development since it requires sudo access.

To configure:

cd kdeconnect-kde
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..

To build and install:
```
make
sudo make install
```

NOTE: If you install KDE Connect in a custom location, you'll need to run kdeconnectd manually, since DBus doesn't know about it.