Get Involved/development/Mac
A screen recording version is available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjFUfZ3Lupo
KDE Craft
The recommended way to build KDE source code on macOS is to use the build framework KDE Craft.
xcode-select --install
Install Craft
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KDE/craft/master/setup/CraftBootstrap.py -o setup.py && python3 setup.py --prefix ~/CraftRoot
Note: At the time of this writing, with a fresh installation of Python 3.7 or 3.8, this command will fail with "certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate". To fix this, run the following, once:
"/Applications/Python [Version]/Install Certificates.command"
Using craft
Every time you want to use craft in a new shell, you need to set up the craft environment, first:
source ~/CraftRoot/craft/craftenv.sh
In this shell, now craft is usable, e.g. to build the KDE desktop calculator app kcalc with all dependencies:
craft kcalc
If KDE Craft succeeds, it will build kcalc from source code and run the equivalent of ninja install. At the end of the output from the command line craft kcalc you can see something like:
/Users/administrator/CraftRoot/build/kde/kdeutils/kcalc/image-RelWithDebInfo-23.08.1/Applications/KDE/kcalc.app/Contents/MacOS/kcalc
You can now run the macOS GUI app kcalc either from the terminal:
open /Users/administrator/CraftRoot/build/kde/kdeutils/kcalc/image-RelWithDebInfo-23.08.1/Applications/KDE/kcalc.app
Or you can open the macOS app Finder which is the macOS file manager, from Finder main menu > Go > Go to Folder... > paste /Users/administrator/CraftRoot/build/kde/kdeutils/kcalc/image-RelWithDebInfo-23.08.1/Applications/KDE, press the Go button. It will show the app kcalc.app, double click on the app kcalc.app.
Run:
lsof | grep kcalc
It will output something like:
kcalc 32943 administrator 0r CHR 3,2 0t0 324 /dev/null kcalc 32943 administrator 1u CHR 3,2 0t0 324 /dev/null kcalc 32943 administrator 2u CHR 3,2 0t0 324 /dev/null
That means that when you open kcalc.app from Finder or from the command line using the open command line, the STDOUT and STDERR of kcalc are connected to /dev/null, not to the terminal.
In order to have the standard streams of kcalc connected to the terminal, run:
/Users/administrator/CraftRoot/build/kde/kdeutils/kcalc/image-RelWithDebInfo-23.08.1/Applications/KDE/kcalc.app/Contents/MacOS/kcalc
In order to see Qt logs in the terminal (STDOUT), as per Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Debugging/Using_Error_Messages run:
QT_LOGGING_RULES="*=true;qt.*=false" /Users/administrator/CraftRoot/build/kde/kdeutils/kcalc/image-RelWithDebInfo-23.08.1/Applications/KDE/kcalc.app/Contents/MacOS/kcalc
Case sensitive filesystem considerations
When building craft packages on case-sensitive filesystem, you will see errors in packages referencing some of the KF5 libraries:
fatal error: 'sonnet/highlighter.h' file not found
This is a known upstream issue: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419167
NOTE: The bug was closed due to a lack of information. If you run into this issue, please reopen it!
The workaround for now is either to create and mount a case-insensitive disk image for craft usage or to manually create symlinks as needed.
Alternative to KDE Craft. Installation using a patched version of Qt and MacPorts
- Install Macports
- Note: If you have an existing installation of MacPorts and installed ports that depend on Qt, see this mail.
- Install git, if you don't have it yet:
sudo port install git
- Get the ports tree for patched qt and frameworks:
# We assume you're doing this in your home directory cd ~ git clone https://github.com/mkae/macstrop.git # create index cd macstrop portindex
- Register the new ports with Macports. To do so, edit ${prefix}/etc/macports/sources.conf, where prefix is the root path of your MacPorts installation (/opt/local by default). Add the following line above any other path specifications (thus making sure it will take precedence):
file:///Users/YourUserName/macstrop
It is recommended that you build the patched Qt before any frameworks, in order to make extra sure all dependencies are resolved, correctly:
sudo port install qt5-kde
You can now start building frameworks or applications (if already packaged), using e.g.
sudo port install kf5-parts sudo port install kf5-kate sudo port install kf5-frameworkintegration # will get the most common frameworks in one go
Many ports have additional variants, such as "+docs" for handbooks / API documentation:
sudo port install kf5-kate +docs port variants kf5-kate # list available variants port notes kf5-kate # show any notes