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Looking at KDevelop, the user interface can be described by it's logical separation: the main window, the treeview and the output
window, surrounded by the menubar, toolbars and the statusbar. This section describes the purpose of each part of the interface,
starting by the windows, followed by the bars and the functions they provide.
The Main Window has three different modes.
In the Childframe Mode KDevelop will be one big window that can contain multiple child windows. These child windows can be either
editable files or the help-browser. You can switch between the files by either pressing the corresponding button in the MDI-View-Taskbar
or by pressing ALT-PgUp or ALT-PgDown.
In Toplevel Mode KDevelop itself will shrink to a small window just containing the menu and the toolbars. All child windows are
floating on your desktop like any KDE App.
The Tab page mode looks similar to the Childframe Mode, but will display all childwindows in a tabset.
For a description of the Editor windows functionality, see chapter
Working with the Editor, and for the Helpbrowser, you should look at section
Using the Documentation Browser.
The Class Viewer
The Class Viewer (Classes) shows the classes of your project as well as global functions and variables.
Opening the tree will show all member functions and members with symbols for attributes (private, protected and public,
signals and slots), so you can see the properties of members visually without switching to the header file. Selecting the class name
will open the according headerfile containing the class and set the cursor to the class declaration beginning. Selecting
member functions will open the implementation file and place the cursor at the function header. For elements, KDevelop will
look for the header file and place the cursor at the line the element is declarated. The classviewer also provides popup-menus
that offer more specified options, see
The Class Browser for more detailed information.
Mind that the Class Viewer does not display generated files like those generated by moc and uic as they get removed from the distribution
as well as they are not present on a clean development tree.
The Logical File Viewer
The Logical File Viewer (Groups) allows sorting files by filters in groups. Individual groups can be added by the properties
entry of the project menu or by a right click on the tree items. This allows a more specialized search for files that you want to
access quickly, in the first place only showing project-included files. According to their Mime-type, the files will be opened
when selected. You will like the LFV for things like selecting pixmaps- this will start KIconEdit (if installed on the system) in
the Tools-window and opens the chosen picture.
The Real File Viewer
The Real File Viewer (Files) shows the project directory tree with all files, so you can edit non-project files or files
hidden by the LFV like configure.in and Makefiles.
Popup-menus also provide functions like adding or removing files to the current project.
The Documentation Tree
The Documentation Tree (Books) displays all available HTML-based documentation that is configured as books. Selecting a
book will open the first page in the Browser window. Also, a popup-menu provides personal configuration for additional HTML-based
documentation packages.
The Output window is separated as well into a messages window, a stdin/stdout
window and a stderr window for the following necessities:
- messages window: displays all output of the Compiler. Clicking on error messages will change the edit widget to set the
cursor to the line the Compiler found an error.
- stdout window: display for terminal based applications that send messages to the standard output of the computer. Note that
Terminal applications are now started in an external console window.
- stderr window: displays all the error messages your program
produces. This is useful for testing purposes. The Output window is programmed to show up each time an external process is called,
such as make or a terminal application.
File Management and Printing
This section covers the functions that KDevelop provides about files; accessed via the File-menu in the menubar or by the
according icons in the toolbar:
- New Ctrl+N Opens the "New File" dialog, allowing to create a new file. The file can be created using different templates
and the filename has to be given as well as the path where the file will be created.
- Open Ctrl+O displays the "Open File..." dialog and lets you choose a file to be opened.
- Close Ctrl+W Closes the file in the top editing window
- Save Ctrl+S Saves the file opened in the top editing window. If the file has not been saved yet, the "Save File As..."
dialog will be opened to let you choose a path and filename for the file to be saved.
- Save As... Opens the "Save File As..." dialog to let you save the current file under a new filename
- Save All Saves all changed files
- Print... Ctrl+P Opens the "Print File" dialog where you can set various options for printing either using enscript or
lpr
- Quit Ctrl+Q Exits KDevelop. If files are changed, you will be asked if you want to save these files.
Editing Files
Here, the "Edit" menu and the according icons in the toolbar are covered which provide editing files. Also the editing functions
are available via a context-menu in the editor.
- Undo Ctrl+Z Reverts the last editing operation
- Redo Ctrl+Y lets you do the last undo step again
- Cut Ctrl+X cuts out a selection and copies it to the system clipboard.
- Copy Ctrl+C copies a selection to the system clipboard. This also counts for selections made in the documentation
browser.
- Paste Ctrl+V inserts the clipboard contents at the current cursor position.
- Indent Ctrl+I Indent moves a selection to the right
- UnIndent Ctrl+U UnIndent moves a selection to the left
- Insert File...Ctrl+Insert Lets you select a file and inserts its contents at the current cursor position
- Search... Ctrl+FOpens the Search dialog that looks for an expression in the current file. For a search across several
files, "Search in files..." should be used.
- Repeat Search F3 Repeats the last search for an expression. This also counts for searches that were made across the
documentation, where more than one hit was found in the same page. The next hit will be displayed by choosing "Repeat Search"
or F3 and signed as marked.
- Replace... Ctrl+R Opens the "Search and Replace" dialog that allows the search for an expression and replaces the found
text with a new expression.
- Search in files... F2Displays the "Search in files..." dialog, that handles
grep on whole directories with
wildcards. Search results are displayed with a list of the filenames, line and expression. Choosing an entry will open the file
and the cursor is set to the line of the search result
- Switch HeaderSource... F12/Switches between corresponding header and source files
- Select All Ctrl+A Selects the whole text of the file currently opened in the top editing window
- Deselect All Deselects the whole text of the current file. This is often used for multiple selections so you don't have
to deselect each one separately
- Invert Selection Inverts the selection, meaning that a selection becomes deselected and text which is not selected
becomes selected.
View Configuration
The View-Menu covers closing and opening functions for windows and commands to enable/disable the tool- and statusbar as well as
to jump errors in the code.
- Goto Line... Ctrl+GOpens a "Go to Line..." dialog that lets you insert a linenumber to show in the actual file. The last
linenumber is remembered and marked, so you can either jump to that line again or just enter a new linenumber you want to see.
- Next Error F4Jumps to the next error KDevelop detects from the output. The output message of Make or other tools should
give you a descriptive help what the problem is, so you can correct the error.
- Previous Error Shift+F4 Jumps to the previous error that was reported.
- Tree-View Ctrl+T en/disables the Tree window on the left side of the main view containing the Class Browser, LFV,
RFV and DOC-tree.
- Output-View Ctrl+B en/disables the Output window on the bottom of the main view.
- Toolbar en/disables the toolbar.
- Browser-Toolbar en/disables the browser toolbar, containing the back, forward and search buttons for the browser
- Refresh rescans all files to rebuild the Class Browser. The scanning progress is shown in the statusbar progress display.
Creating and Maintaining Projects
This section describes functions that are available in the "Project"-menu and are supposed to cover the creation and maintaining
of projects
- New... Starts the KAppWizard and allows you to create a new project by choosing application type, name,
version and other options.
- Open Shows the Open Project dialog, where you can choose a KDevelop project file to be opened. After selection, the
project will be loaded.
- Open recent project... contains a submenu with the last 5 opened projects. You can open a project more easily using the
recent project menu.
- CloseCloses the current project. This is mostly done automatically when you quit KDevelop, invoke the
KAppWizard or open another project.
- New Class...Starts the class generator to create a new class that will be added to the current project. The class
generator lets you specify classname, inheritance and filenames for the new class.
- Add existing File(s) Opens a selection dialog where you can choose the files that you want to add to the current project and
the path where they will be copied to. If you choose a destination that was currently not included in the project, e.g. creating a new
subdirectory, KDevelop will copy the files to add to the new subdirectory and create a new Makefile.am. After the copy process,
your project will be rebuild by automake and autoconf to include the new subdirectory into the make-process.
- Add new translation file Opens a language selection dialog that lets you choose the translation file language that will be
added to the project. This is mostly used by translators who can easily add their language to the project and work on the
translation without having to care about the Makefile.am's
- File Properties Shift+F7 Opens the File Properties dialog showing a copy of the LFV and the project file options. Here, the
properties for your files have to be set like installation path and file type.
- Make messages and merge This is intended to create the messages file for your project. The message file is the one
containing all strings that are set up in the sources for internationalization and is used by translators to create the .po file
for their target language.
- Make API-Doc Calls KDoc on your header files and generates a HTML output with the documentation of your project
classes.
- Make User-Manual runs KSgml2Html on your manual SGML file, creating a HTML user manual. If KSgml2Html is not installed,
sgml2html will be used to do this.
- Make Distribution:
- tar.gz creates a distribution file of your current project in the project directory that is ready to ship to the end-users
containing the sources of your project. The end-user has to
tar zxvf yourproject.tar.gz to unpack it to a source directory and
use the standard commands ./configure, make and make install.
- Load Tags File Generates and loads the file containing the tags needed for source code navigation.
- Options F7 Opens the Project Options dialog that
lets you change various settings for your project. This could be a new version number or the compiler options to set to -02 for a
release with optimization.
Building Projects
This section describes the Build menu that covers all actions to be done with make or actions like rebuilding the project's online
help or API documentation.
- Compile file... Ctrl+F8Active, if the top editing window is the C++ Window. This only compiles the current implementation
file and lets you save time in case you suspect errors.
- Make F8 Invokes the make-command to your project and builds the target.
- Rebuild All Rebuilds all object files and the target of you project.
- Clean Rebuild All Cleans the project directory from all make-created files and rebuilds the target.
- Stop Build F10 Stops the current process.
- Execute F9 Executes your target after building the program with make.
- Execute with Arguments Alt+F9 Executes your target with arguments. First, a dialog appears to let you specify the execution
arguments (which are saved in the project for the next session), then your application uses the entered commandline. Mind that your
application program is started from the project directory directly
- Debug... Opens KDbg in the Tools-Window to debug your
application. In this case, KDbg automatically opens the file containing the main() function and executes your application.
- Distclean Removes all files that are generated by the project like object files etc. Distclean has to be done before
distributing your project, so the distribution file doesn't contain any platform-specific files like those that were generated by your
Compiler.
- Autoconf and automake Calls Make on the file Makefile.dist, located in your main project directory. Makefile.dist contains
all commands for automake, autoconf etc. to build your project. If you added files manually or changed macros yourself, you should run
Autoconf afterwards, followed by Configure to recreate all Makefiles.
- Configure Executes the configure-script generated by autoconf. If this command cannot be executed, run Autoconf and then
Configure again.
Calling Tools
The Tools-menu contains by default the entries for the following programs if installed: KDbg, KIconEdit and KTranslator. These are
checked by the KDevelop installation program and inserted in the given order into the menu. Invoking a tool will open the
"Tools"-window and start the selected program inside this window. The Tools menu can be edited by the Tools-entry in the Options-menu;
see
Configuring the Tools Menu.
Changing KDevelop's settings
The Options-menu contains all entries for invoking configuration dialogs with which you can change KDevelop's default settings.
Major settings like those for the editor or printing have their own entries; general settings of KDevelop's behavior can be made
with the
KDevelop Setup dialog.
- Editor... Allows the configuration of the editor's behavior like word-breaking, selections etc.
- Editor Colors... Here, you can set the color-configuration of the editor like e.g. the background.
- Editor Defaults... This sets the default display like font and fontsize for the editor
- Syntax-Highlighting This dialog lets you configure the fonts and colors for the highlighting of several programming
languages, including HTML.
- Documentation Browser In this tab-dialog, you can set the fonts, sizes and colors for the internal Helpbrowser
- Configure Printer... Contains the entries for the printer configuration dialogs.
- enscript Configures the printer for use with enscript. See Printing for more information.
- Tools... Opens the Configure Tools dialog. Here, you can configure the "Tools" menu by adding or removing programs that will
be started in the Tools-window.
- KDevelop Setup Opens the KDevelop Setup dialog. The first tabulator configures general settings, followed by the
key-configuration and the Documentation settings. The Documentation settings also include the generation of a new set of
HTML-library documentation and the rebuilding of the search index for the Helpbrowser.
The Window Menu
The Window menu contains a list with all currently open files. This allows a quick switch to another file you're currently working
on.
Managing Bookmarks
The Bookmarks menu is intended for adding and removing bookmarks you want to set in the current editing file. As KDevelop uses two
editing windows, each one configures it's bookmarks separately.
- Set Bookmark Opens a context-menu with up to nine configurable bookmarks. This allows setting a bookmark to a certain entry
in the bookmarks menu by logical reasons.
- Add Bookmark Ctrl+Alt+A Adds the line of the current cursor position to the bookmarks menu as a bookmark. Mind that this
could overwrite a bookmark set with the Set Bookmark-option. If the browser is opened, a bookmark will be added to the
Browser-Window bookmarks menu.
- Clear Bookmarks Ctrl+Alt+C Clears the bookmark-entries for the top editing window or the browser, e.g. if
the Header-Window is visible and you call Clear Bookmarks, the entries for the Header-Window are deleted.
- Header-Window Contains the bookmark-list for the Header-Window. Selecting a bookmark will set the cursor to the selected
bookmarks' line. Mind that bookmarks are only assigned to the file they are set to, so if you change to another file, the
bookmarks are not deleted but choosing a bookmark won't change to the file they are assigned to as well.
- C/C++-Window Contains the bookmark-list for the C/C++-Window. The preferences are the same as for the
Header-Window.
- Browser Window Contains the browser bookmarks. Selecting a bookmark will open the browser with the selected page.
Online Help
The Help-menu contains entries for navigating in the Helpbrowser as well as entries for library and online-documentation for the
most recently used cases. Accessing additional online-documentation can be achieved with the DOC-tree in the treeview
automatically opened (if Autoswitch is enabled) when changing to the Documentation Browser window.
- Back Alt+ Left Arrow Opens the page opened before the actual one.
- Forward Alt+ Right Arrow Opens the next page of the browser-history, available after a "Back"-action.
- Search Marked Text F2 Scans the search-index for text currently marked in the editing windows or the browser-window.
After the search, a result page is shown which lets you select the help-page to switch to. After choosing a page, the browser will
highlight the found entry for the expression the search was invoked for. With the F3 key the next search result on the same page
will be displayed if more than one hit was reported for the search on one page.
- Search for Help on...Opens the Search for Help on... dialog that lets you search for a specific expression you want
help on.
- The User Manual to KDevelop F1 Opens the User's Manual to KDevelop index page (this handbook).
- The KDevelop Programming Handbook
Opens the
KDevelop Programming Handbook
index page. This handbook contains a complete programming guide to KDE development.
- KDE Application Tutorials
Changes to the index page of the
KDE Application Tutorials handbook.
This handbook explains how to build the Qt tutorial applications and introduces you to KDE programming by developing
an example application.
- The KDE Library Reference Guide
Changes to the index page of the
KDE Library Reference Guide. This handbook contains
detailed information about using the KDE/Qt libraries separated on topics such as event handling.
- The KDE 2 Developerīs Guide
Changes to the index page of the
KDE 2 Developerīs Guide. This Handbook contains
information about the most recent KDE development and how to prepare your application to be KDE 2-ready.
- C/C++ Reference Displays the language reference index page. If the
reference is not installed, an error page shows you how to get the reference and how to install it correctly.
- Tip of the Day Opens the Tip of the Day dialog to inform you about KDevelop's
features.
- KDevelop Homepage Opens the KDevelop Homepage in the browser window if Internet access is provided.
- Bug Report... Opens the KDevelop Bug Report dialog, where you can send a bug-report directly to the KDevelop Team by
email. See
Bug Reporting
- Project-API-Doc Changes to the project's class-documentation index file.
- Project-User-Manual Opens the User manual's index file of your current project. This can be used to review the
HTML-output generated by KSgml2Html
- About KDevelop... Shows the aboutbox of KDevelop containing the used version number and the authors' names and
email-addresses as well as reference to the licensing of KDevelop.
KDevelop provides quick access to a various set of commands by it's toolbars. These are the standard and the browser toolbar.
Both can be en-/disabled by the according menu entries in the "View" menu; also
dragged out of the main window and replaced on each side of the working area.
The Standard Toolbar
The standard toolbar provides quick access to the most recently used functions for file processing and editing as well as building your
application. The buttons execute the following commands from left to right:
- Open Project - shows the open project dialog
- Open File - shows the open file dialog and contains a delayed popup to fast select the current project header and source files.
- Save File - saves the currently opened file to disk
- Print File - opens the printer dialog
- (separator)
- Undo - reverts the last action
- Redo - executes a reverted action again
- Cut - cuts out the current selection
- Copy - copies the current selection to the system clipboard
- Paste - pastes the current clipboard contents to the actual cursor position
- (separator)
- Compile File - compiles the file currently visible in the source file window. In Dialogeditor mode replaced by the Generate Files
button.
- Make - invokes make on the project
- Rebuild All - rebuilds the project
- Debug - opens KDbg with the application binary for debugging in the Tools- window
- Execute - runs the application target binary
- Stop - cancels the current process
- (separator)
- Dialogeditor - switches to Dialogeditor mode. There, the button is replaced by a Sourcecode editor button
- Tree-View - en-/disables the treeview and works as a toggle button to display the current state
- Output-View - en-/disables the output view and works as a toggle button to display the current state
- (separator)
- What's this..? help button - changes the cursor to a question arrow and lets you get information about GUI components of KDevelop
The Browser Toolbar
The browser toolbar is another toolbar that provides a lot of useful commands for browsing files and the documentation. The
toolbar contains:
- the Class combo box - lets you select a class of the current project to browse to
- the Method combo box - lets you select a method of the current class and browses to the implementation of the method
- the Class-assistant button - on a single click will bring you to the declaration of the method currently selected. Contains a
delayed popup to access the Classtools for adding Classes, Methods and Attributes as well as the browsing commands.
- Back - browses back in the documentation browser history; contains a delayed popup to select a certain page of the back history.
- Forward - browses forward in the documentation browser history; contains a delayed popup to select a certain page of the forward
history.
- Stop - stops the browser from loading a documentation file request
- Reload - reloads the currently displayed page
- Home - opens the KDevelop User Manual index page in the browser
- Search Marked Text - searches the documentation index for the selected text; works with the browser and the editor windows
- Search for Help on... - opens the the Search for Help on.. dialog to let you enter a keyword to search in the documentation
This section handles the predefined as well as the standard values for configurable keyboard commands used in the KDevelop IDE.
You should see section
Changing Keyboard Shortcuts for a detailed explanation how
to change assigned values to commands.
Shortcuts for Text Processing
Cursor Movements
one letter to the left Left Arrow
one letter to the right Right Arrow
one word to the left CTRL+Left Arrow
one word to the right CTRL+Right Arrow
one line upwards Up Arrow
one line downwards Down Arrow
to the beginning of the line POS 1
to the end of the line END
one page up PageUp
one page down PageDown
to the beginning of the current file CTRL+PageUp
to the end of the current file CTRL+PageDown
Text Selections
one letter to the left SHIFT+Left Arrow
one letter to the right SHIFT+Right Arrow
one word to the left CTRL+SHIFT+Left Arrow
one word to the right CTRL+SHIFT+Right Arrow
one line upwards CTRL+Up
one line downwards CTRL+Down
to the beginning of the current line CTRL+POS 1
to the end of the current line CTRL+END
one page up SHIFT+PageUp
one page down SHIFT+PageDown
to the beginning of the current file CTRL+SHIFT+PageUp
to the end of the current file CTRL+SHIFT+PageDown
Inserting and Copying Text, Tabulators
en/disable insertmode INS
copy selection to the clipboard CTRL+C, CTRL+INS
insert text from the clipboard CTRL+V, SHIFT+INS
delete current line CTRL+K
insert line after current line END, then Enter
insert line before current line POS 1, then Enter
undo editing step CTRL+Z
redo an undo step CTRL+Y
tabulator TAB
Deleting Text
delete letter left of cursor position Backspace
delete letter right of cursor position Delete
delete selected text Select text, then Backspace or Delete
Searching Text within the Editor
open Goto Line... dialog CTRL+G
open Find Text dialog CTRL+F
repeat last search F3
open Search and Replace dialog CTRL+R
open Search in Files dialog (grep) CTRL+ALT+F
search marked Text with Grep SHIFT+F2
locate next error F4
locate previous error SHIFT+F4
Searching Text with the Documentation Browser
search selected editor text in documentation F2
search selected browser text in documentation F2
display next search hit on the same page F3
search selected browser text within project SHIFT+F2
Browser Shortcuts
previous page ALT+ Left Arrow
next page ALT+ Right Arrow
Managing Bookmarks
add bookmark CTRL+ALT+A
clear bookmark list CTRL+ALT+C
Shortcuts for Toolbar Symbols
Symbol "Open File" CTRL+O
Symbol "Save File" CTRL+S
Symbol "Print File" CTRL+P
Symbol "Undo" CTRL+Z
Symbol "Redo" CTRL+Y
Symbol "Cut" CTRL+X
Symbol "Copy" CTRL+C
Symbol "Paste" CTRL+V
Symbol "Compile File" CTRL+F8
Symbol "Make" F8
Symbol "Execute" F9
Symbol "Execute with Arguments" ALT+F9
Symbol "Back" ALT+Left Arrow, if browser opened
Symbol "Forward" ALT+Right Arrow, if browser opened
Symbol "Search Marked Text" F2
Window Management
Goto Next Window ALT+PgUp
Goto Next Window ALT+PgDown
Switch between Header/Source F12
Press F12 to switch between corresponding header and source files
To switch to a certain menu, press ALT plus the underlined letter in the menu title, e.g. Tools would be Alt+T
Shortcuts to Compilation Processes
Compile current sourcefile CTRL+F8
Build current project target F8
Execute target after Build process CTRL+F9
Execute target with Arguments ALT+F9
Stop the current process F10
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