The K Desktop Environment

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2. Installation

2.1 How to obtain KDevelop

KDevelop can be found either on the KDE Applications page at http://www.kde.org/current.html or on the KDevelop homepage at http://www.kdevelop.org. KDevelop is also available on Linux distributions, such as SuSE 6.x. and 7.x

We're also offering snapshots of the KDevelop CVS repository on our homepage for those who want to stay up to date with KDevelop. Usually, the snapshots are not intended to be used for production but as a test for new features and to give an insight into development progress of the KDevelop team. Also we offer various third party software needed by KDevelop directly such as KDoc and KDbg.

If you're experiencing problems with compiling or using KDevelop, please read the Questions and Answers section of this handbook or the FAQ-file included with the KDevelop package. If your problem is not addressed, please subscribe to the KDevelop mailing list at kdevelop-request@barney.cs.uni-potsdam.de by sending a mail with an empty header and "subscribe youremailaddress" as contents. Requests and problem report should only target the usage of the KDevelop IDE and not towards any questions that regard any implementation problem you may have while coding your own application. Anyway, all mails send to the mailing list should be written in English, so that all participants can take part on discussions and are able to provide better help. The mailing list is also intended for those users willing to contribute and who found solutions for any problems they experienced, so we can fix errors and include that knowledge to give beginners an even more qualified first-hand help.

An good way to report problems is to send the output you get by starting kdevelop from the console or to copy and paste the contents of KDevelop's internal Messages-window.

2.2 Requirements

In order to successfully compile and use KDevelop, you need the following programs and libraries which are available on most platforms as distribution packages and thereby can be installed easily.

Required:

Optional:

KDevelop was tested with SuSE Linux as well as on several other platforms.

As far as known to the authors, SuSE Linux and FreeBSD contain all necessary packages, including enscript as packages or rpm's, so you should have no problem installing the required third-party software.

Documentation:

For creating the KDE library documentation, you need the kdelibs package in source available on your system as provided by the KDE project or included with the source packages of your distribution and KDoc (included in the KDE-SDK).

Also we're offering a C/C++ Reference on our homepage at http://www.kdevelop.org that is integrated into the documentation browser after it's installation. Download the package and copy the source file as root into your KDE directory and untar it with tar zxvf c_c++_reference.tar.gz, then the reference is available in the documentation tree; otherwise selecting the reference book in the browser shows an error page with the KDevelop homepage URL offering a download and describes the installation process.

2.3 Compilation and Installation

In order to compile and install KDevelop on your system, type the following in the base directory of the KDevelop distribution: 

        % ./configure
        % make

        (as root)

        % make install

Since KDevelop uses autoconf you should have not trouble compiling it.

In order to compile the KDevelop CVS snapshot, type the following : 

        % make -f Makefile.cvs
        % ./configure
        % make

        change as `root` and type:

        % make install

If your system's make-command is gmake, type gmake instead of make.

2.4 Starting KDevelop

If you use KDE as your window manager, KDevelop can be started by choosing "K"->"Development"->"KDevelop 2.0". As KDevelop supports KDE-Mime-types, you can also start by selecting a KDevelop project file ("*.kdevprj", displayed with the KDevelop project icon) in the KDE File Manager which will start KDevelop and load the project. Under other window managers, open a console and type: 

% kdevelop

To start KDevelop with an existing project, change into the project-directory and type: 

% kdevelop  <yourProject>.kdevprj

Under each user account KDevelop will invoke the automatic installation process on the first start, allowing a quick configuration of the most needed options. If your installation is messed up, you can reconfigure KDevelop any time either by entering 

% kdevelop  --setup

or, when using KDE, by choosing "K"->"Development"->"KDevelop Setup".

2.5 The Installation Program

KDevelop includes an automatic installation program module which is invoked whenever KDevelop is started and the configuration file kdeveloprc does not exist. We suggest you follow the installation steps by choosing "Proceed" to automatically check your system and to set up your KDevelop environment.

The Installation dialog's buttons execute the following actions:

Help: Will open the KDEHelp program.

Proceed: This starts the installation process and executes the following actions:

  1. Checking for make/gmake, autoconf, autoheader, automake and perl for the creation and compilation of new applications generated by KDevelop. If gmake is installed, the make-command will be set automatically to use gmake. Other commandline options to your make program can be set in the setup dialog accessed by the options menu later, an introduction into development under Unix is explained in section Programs.
  2. Checking for KDoc and glimpse. Those will allow to create a new KDE-Library documentation and a search index automatically in a later setup step if found.
  3. Checking for enscript to ensure that printing is available. This program has to be installed to allow correct printing. If it isn't installed, you can do this at any time later on at your option without having to run the setup again.
  4. Checking for KDbg, KIconEdit and KTranslator. We encourage you to install those programs as they are good helpers for creating complete KDE-applications. Note that KDbg is used directly for debugging your current project within KDevelop; KIconEdit is used to display and edit pixmaps selected in the file-viewer trees. The programs KDbg, KIconEdit and KTranslator are then configured to be available in the "Tools" menu of the KDevelop menu bar if they are found. Other tools can be added to the Tools-menu by selecting "Tools..." in the Options menu later.
  5. Summary of detected programs: the installer lists those programs it found and those it didn't. Additional hints are given, if a needed program is recommended.
  6. Detection of your Qt-Documentation path: this checks for several standard paths in your system for the documentation and sets the path automatically. If your Qt-Documentation could not be found either because it is not installed or your system keeps it at a different location, a message will appear that asks you to set the correct path manually or to continue. Choosing the button to set the path will return to the main installation window and shows an editing field with a button on the right of it to choose the path. Usually this is in the qt/html directory. After doing so, the installation can continue with the selection of "Proceed" again.
  7. If KDoc was detected, you are asked to create/update your KDE-library documentation. For that, you need to have the kde-libraries in source form. For Linux-Users who have installed KDE from a distribution, we suggest to copying and extracting the source of the kdelibs-package to your system; Free BSD users who installed the kdelibs as a package should look for their according distfile package of the ports-collection. If none of these cases match your situation, you should download the sources from http://www.kde.org and untar the sources on your system. If you wish to use the documentation package provided by http://developer.kde.org, cancel the creation and continue with creating the search index. After the installer finished and KDevelop has been started, set the path to the extracted documentation package in the KDevelop Setup dialog and run the search index setup again, which can be found at the same setup page of the dialog. The "Update KDE-Library documentation" dialog is set up to use a default path for the location of the documentation in $(HOME)/.kde/share/apps/kdevelop/KDE-Documentation. The only thing you have to do is choosing the path to your library sources you extracted on the system with the selection button on top of the dialog and press OK. As an example, if you got the kdelibs.tar.gz package from http://www.kde.org and downloaded it to your home directory, you should open a console or terminal and enter "tar zxvf kdelibs.tar.gz". This will untar the sources into a directory $HOME/kdelibs, which then contains the sources for each library in a subdirectory, e.g. for kdecore, this would be in /home/rnolden/kdelibs/kdecore. Now, the path you have to enter in the KDE-Library documentation dialog would be the path to all libraries, in the example /home/rnolden/kdelibs. After pressing the OK button, a message in the installation window shows that the documentation generation is in progress and you should wait for the next message.

    NOTE: On a multi-user system or systems with disk-quotas for user accounts, the installation of a complete HTML documentation for each user would be a waste of disk space. In this case, ask your system administrator to run KDevelop under the root account to allow write access to the system's root directory. Then install the documentation within the KDE-directory, under $KDEDIR/share/apps/kdevelop/KDE-Documentation. The correct path can then be set up later in the KDevelop setup dialog, available in the "Options"-menu.

  8. If the system check found the glimpse program on your system, you are offered to create a search database. The search database can be created with the options of including the KDE-Documentation and the Qt-Documentation (default). Additionally the KDevelop documentation is included and will be indexed. If you have other documentation that you want indexed you can select the directories and add them to the indexing process as well.
  9. During the creation of the search index, the installation window will show a message that this is in progress.
  10. If all installation steps were done correctly, a final message states that KDevelop will be started after pressing OK. Mind that you can set up additional options like auto saving in the KDevelop Setup dialog that can be accessed through the options menu.

Cancel: Will show a warning message that the installation process is going to be canceled. This warning message allows you to return to the installation ("Back") or to start KDevelop with the default values ("Continue"). Mind that in this case you will have to set all options yourself with the configuration dialogs provided in the options-menu.

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