# &kdesrc-build; Script Manual

Michael
Pyne

    mpyne@kde.org

Carlos
Woelz

    carloswoelz@imap-mail.com

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Michael Pyne
2005
Carlos Woelz
&FDLNotice;
2010-01-30
1.12

&kdesrc-build; is a script which builds and installs &kde; software directly from the &kde; project's source code repositories.

KDE
kdesdk
SVN
Subversion
git
gitorious
KDE development
kdesvn-build
kdecvs-build

## Introduction

&kdesrc-build; is a script to help users install &kde; software from its &subversion; and &git; source repositories.

This software used to be called kdesvn-build, so you may still see references to kdesvn-build on the Internet or in your installed documentation.

This guide is an overview to describe the following aspects of &kdesrc-build; operation:

- Notable features.

- An overview of the steps required to get started.

- The configuration file syntax and options.

- The command line options.

Also documented are the steps which you should perform using other tools, (in other words, steps that are not automatically performed by &kdesrc-build;).

## Getting Started

In this chapter, we show how to use the &kdesrc-build; to checkout modules from the &kde; repository and build them. We also provide a basic explanation of the &kde; &subversion; structure and the steps you have to perform before running the script.

All topics present in this chapter are covered with even more detail in the Building &kde; 4 from Source article, at the &kde; TechBase site. If you are compiling &kde; for the first time, it is a good idea to read it, or consult it as a reference source. You will find detailed information about packaging tools and requirements, common compilation pitfalls and strategies and information about running your new &kde; installation.

### Preparing the System to Build &kde;

#### Setup a new user account

It is recommended that you use a different user account to build, install, and run your &kde; software from, since less permissions are required, and to avoid interfering with your distribution's packages. If you already have &kde; packages installed, the best choice would be to create a different (dedicated) user to build and run the new &kde;.

Leaving your system &kde; untouched also allows you to have an emergency fallback in case a compiled &kde; is unstable for whatever reason.

Later, you can do a system installation if you wish. This document does not cover a system installation. If you are performing a system wide install, you should already know what you are doing. If not, then you may want to consult the documentation, or help sites, for your distribution in order to prepare and use the system installation correctly.

#### Ensure your system is ready to build &kde; source

Before using the &kdesrc-build; script (or any other building strategy) you must install the development tools and libraries needed for &kde;. The complete list of required tools can be found from the KDE TechBase.

Here is a list of some of the things you will need:

- You will need &cmake;. The required version will vary depending on what version of &kde; 4 you are building, see TechBase for specifics.

- Also needed is the &subversion; client program, including support for Secure HTTP (https). To ensure needed support, you can run ``svn `--version```. If the output says that it handles the https scheme (for write access to svn.kde.org) or svn scheme (for readonly access to anonsvn.kde.org) then you should be set to go.

- If you are building &Qt; or any of the various &kde; modules that are available from Gitorious then you will need the Git source control manager installed as well.

- You will need a C++ development environment. GCC 3.4 or later is recommended.

Most operating system distributions include a method of easily installing required development tools. Consult the TechBase Getting Started page's Required Packages from your Distribution section to see if these instructions are already available.

One exception to the required libraries is the &Qt; library. &kdesrc-build; will normally install a copy of &Qt; whether you have it installed or not, so it is not necessary for you to have it. If you do not want to use the &Qt; copy, you need to do these things:

- Make sure to remove the qt-copy module from your configuration file, as you will not need it, and having it would add extra time to your build.

- Change the setting of the qtdir option in your configuration file to point to your system &Qt;. This is normally equal to the setting of $`QTDIR` for your system.

- If you do not already have &Qt; installed, install it, including any relevant -dev or -devel packages. You will need at least &Qt; 4.6 if you are building &kde; 4.

Some of these packages are divided into libraries (or programs or utilities), and development packages. You will need at least the program or library and its development package. If in doubt, install all. The libraries you need will change depending on the modules you intend to build, as each module has its own requirements. The &kde; TechBase has more details about the specific tools and techniques used to install and find the required software.

#### Setup &kdesrc-build;

##### Install &kdesrc-build;

You probably already have a version of the &kdesrc-build; script installed in your system. However, if you do not, you can download it from &kdesrc-build; home page, or you can find it from its home in the &kde; source repository.

&kdesrc-build; is included with the kdesdk module, and the module is often installed by distributions already. If you have downloaded &kdesrc-build; ensure that you are using the version you downloaded. You can use the --version option to be sure you are running the version you think you are.

1. To download &kdesrc-build; from its home page, simply go to the &kdesrc-build; home page and download the latest appropriate release. The release is packaged as a compressed tarball archive, which you can extract using &ark; or `tar`. The contents of the archive include the actual &kdesrc-build; script, and a sample configuration file (`kdesrc-buildrc-sample`).

2. Or, you can obtain &kdesrc-build; from its source repository, located at: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdesdk/scripts/. This is the &kde; Software Development Kit scripting directory, which is the home of &kdesrc-build;. You can click on the `kdesrc-build` entry which will bring you to a page where you can download the latest revision. Do so, and save it to a convenient spot on your hard disk. Do the same for `kdesrc-buildrc-sample` if you need to.

No matter which technique you use, you need to make sure that the `kdesrc-build` file is executable. For convenience you should make sure it is in a directory contained in the `PATH` environment variable, otherwise you may get messages saying that the command was not found, or you may run a previously-installed version by mistake.

##### Prepare the configuration file

Although &kdesrc-build; does not require you to create a configuration file, it makes the work flow much easier. Using a configuration file, you can control which modules are installed, or remove modules you do not want to install. &kdesrc-build; by default installs a useful &kde; installation using very generic installation flags, which may be different from your needs. So it is best to use a configuration file.

The configuration file should be called `.kdesrc-buildrc`. This file should be installed on the home folder (`~/`), and contain all configuration data required for the script to run, like configuration options, compiling options, location of the sources, the destination of the installation (prefix), the modules that should be built, &etc;. The default configuration data is provided by the `kdesrc-buildrc-sample` file, which you can copy over as `~/.kdesrc-buildrc` and then edit.

You can find more information about the syntax of the configuration file in and in .

### Setting the Configuration Data

To use &kdesrc-build;, you should have a file in your home directory called `.kdesrc-buildrc`, which sets the general options and sets the modules you would like to download and build.

It is possible to use different configuration files for &kdesrc-build;, which is described in . If you need to use multiple configurations, please see that section. Here, we will assume the configuration is stored in `~/.kdesrc-buildrc`.

The easiest way to proceed is to use the `kdesrc-buildrc-sample` file as a template, changing global options to match your wants, and also change the list of modules you want to build.

The default settings should actually already be appropriate to perform a &kde; build. Some settings that you may wish to alter include:

- binpath, to change the list of directories that will be searched for commands. This is exactly the same as the `PATH` variable in the shell.

- kdedir, which changes the destination directory that &kde; is installed to. This defaults to `~/kde`, which is a single-user installation.

- qtdir, which controls the path to the installation of &Qt; to use. The default is to use a &Qt; compiled by &kdesrc-build;, using the special qt-copy module and the latest available source code. (`~/kdesrc/build/qt-copy`).

  This also controls where to install qt-copy.

- svn-server, which selects what &url; to download the sources from. This is useful if you are a developer with a &kde; &subversion; account.

After the global section is a list of modules to build, bracketed by module ... end module lines. Check if the listed modules are in fact the modules you want to build. The default options from the `kdesrc-buildrc-sample` file should be enough to get a fairly complete &kde; installation. Save the result as `.kdesrc-buildrc` in your home folder.

If you wish to fine tune your `.kdesrc-buildrc`, consult for detailed information about all configuration options.

### Using the &kdesrc-build; script

Now you are ready to run the script. From a terminal window, log in to the user you are using to compile &kde; and execute the script:

    $kdesrc-build

Now, the script should start downloading the sources and compiling them. Depending on how many modules you are downloading, it is possible that &kdesrc-build; will not succeed the first time you compile &kde;. Do not despair!

&kdesrc-build; logs the output of every command it runs. By default, the log files are kept in `~/kdesrc/log`. To see what the caused an error for a module in the last &kdesrc-build; command, usually it is sufficient to look at `~/kdesrc/log/latest/module-name/error.log`.

In that file, you will see the error that caused the build to fail for that module. If the file says (at the bottom) that you are missing some packages, try installing the package (including any appropriate -dev packages) before trying to build that module, and pass the --reconfigure option after installing the missing packages.

Or, if the error appears to be a build error then it is probably an error with the &kde; source, which will hopefully be resolved within a few days. If it is not resolved within that time, feel free to mail the kde-devel@kde.org mailing list (subscription may be required first) in order to report the build failure.

You can find more common examples of things that can go wrong and their solutions, as well as general tips and strategies to build &kde; in the Building &kde; 4 from Source.

For more information about &kdesrc-build;'s logging features, please see .

### Setting the Environment to Run Your Fresh &kde;

Assuming you are using a dedicated user to build &kde;, and you already have an installed &kde; version, running your new &kde; may be a bit tricky, as the new &kde; has to take precedence over the old. Change the environment variables to make sure it does.

#### Changing your startup profile settings

The `.bash_profile` is the login settings file for the popular bash shell used by many &Linux; distributions. If you use a different shell, then you may need to adjust the samples given in this section for your particular shell.

Open or create the `.bash_profile` file in the home directory with your favorite editor, and add to the end of the file:

If you are building the qt-copy module (you are by default), add instead:

    QTDIR=(path to qtdir)   # Such as ~/kdesrc/build/qt-copy by default.
    KDEDIR=(path to kdedir) # Such as ~/kde by default.
    KDEDIRS=$KDEDIR
    PATH=$KDEDIR/bin:$QTDIR/bin:$PATH
    MANPATH=$QTDIR/doc/man:$MANPATH

    # Act appropriately if LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not already set.
    if [ -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$QTDIR/lib
    else
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    fi

    export QTDIR KDEDIRS PATH MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH

or, if you are not building qt-copy (and are using your system &Qt; instead), add this instead:

    KDEDIR=(path to kdedir)  # Such as ~/kde by default.
    KDEDIRS=$KDEDIR
    PATH=$KDEDIR/bin:$QTDIR/bin:$PATH

    # Act appropriately if LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not already set.
    if [ -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib
    else
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    fi

    export KDEDIRS PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH

If you are not using a dedicated user, set a different $`KDEHOME` for your new environment in your `.bash_profile`:

    export KDEHOME="${HOME}/.kde-svn"

    # Create it if needed
    [ ! -e ~/.kde-svn ] && mkdir ~/.kde-svn

If later your K Menu is empty or too crowded with applications from your distribution, you may have to set the XDG environment variables in your `.bash_profile`:

    XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg"
    XDG_DATA_DIRS="${KDEDIR}/share:/usr/share"
    export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS XDG_DATA_DIRS

#### Starting &kde;

Now that you have adjusted your environment settings to use the correct &kde;, it is important to ensure that the correct `startkde` script is used as well.

Open the `.xinitrc` text file from the home directory, or create it if necessary. Add the line:

    exec ${KDEDIR}/bin/startkde

On some distributions, it may be necessary to perform the same steps with the `.xsession` file, also in the home directory. This is especially true when using graphical login managers such as &kdm;, gdm, or xdm.

Now start your fresh &kde;: in &BSD; and &Linux; systems with virtual terminal support, &Ctrl;&Alt;F1 ... &Ctrl;&Alt;F12 keystroke combinations are used to switch to Virtual Console 1 through 12. This allows you to run more than one desktop environment at the same time. The fist six are text terminals and the following six are graphical displays.

If when you start your computer you are presented to the graphical display manager instead, you can use the new &kde; environment, even if it is not listed as an option. Most display managers, including &kdm;, have an option to use a Custom Session when you login. With this option, your session settings are loaded from the `.xsession` file in your home directory. If you have already modified this file as described above, this option should load you into your new &kde; installation.

If it does not, there is something else you can try that should normally work: Press &Ctrl;&Alt;F2, and you will be presented to a text terminal. Log in using the dedicated user and type:

    startx -- :1

You can run the &kde; from sources and the old &kde; at the same time! Log in using your regular user, start the stable &kde; desktop. Press &Ctrl;&Alt;F2 (or F1, F3, etc..), and you will be presented with a text terminal. Log in using the dedicated &kde; &subversion; user and type:

    startx -- :1

You can go back to the &kde; desktop of your regular user by pressing the shortcut key for the already running desktop. This is normally &Ctrl;&Alt;F7, you may need to use F6 or F8 instead. To return to your &kdesrc-build;-compiled &kde;, you would use the same sequence, except with the next function key. For example, if you needed to enter &Ctrl;&Alt;F7 to switch to your regular &kde;, you would need to enter &Ctrl;&Alt;F8 to go back to your &kdesrc-build; &kde;.

## Script Features

### Feature Overview

&kdesrc-build; features include:

- Supports output message levels ranging from being very quiet to a full debug level.

- &kdesrc-build; can, with the assistance of the &kdesrc-build; website and the &kde; FTP server (FTP since &kdesrc-build; 1.4), allow for speedy checkouts of some modules. If the module you are checking out has already been packaged at the website, then &kdesrc-build; will download the snapshot and prepare it for use on your computer.

  This is faster for you, and helps to ease the load on the kde.org anonymous &subversion; servers.

- Another speedup is provided by starting the build process for a module as soon as the source code for that module has been downloaded. (Available since version 1.6)

- Has excellent support for the qt-copy module, including optionally applying bugfix and optimization patches to the qt-copy module.

- &kdesrc-build; has colorized output.

- &kdesrc-build; does not require a GUI present to operate. So, you can build &kde; without needing an alternate graphical environment.

- Supports setting default options for all modules (such as the compilation settings or the configuration options). Such options can normally be changed for specific modules as well.

  Also, &kdesrc-build; will add standard flags as appropriate to save you the trouble and possible errors from typing them yourself.

- &kdesrc-build; can checkout a specific branch or tag of a module. You can also ensure that a specific revision is checked out of a module.

- &kdesrc-build; can automatically switch a source directory to checkout from a different repository, branch, or tag. This happens automatically when you change an option that changes what the repository &url; should be, but you must use the --src-only option to let &kdesrc-build; know that it is acceptable to perform the switch.

- &kdesrc-build; can checkout only portions of a module, for those situations where you only need one program from a large module.

- The initial download of some modules can be accelerated by &kdesrc-build;, which will (if available) automatically download a module snapshot from the &kde; mirrors and use that to setup the initial checkout. This saves time and bandwidth for both your system and the &kde; servers.

- For developers: &kdesrc-build; will remind you if you use svn+ssh:// but ssh-agent is not running, as this will lead to repeated password requests from &ssh;.

- Can e-mail reports of errors to a user.

- Can delete the build directory of a module after its installation to save space at the expense of future compilation time.

- The locations for the directories used by &kdesrc-build; are configurable (even per module).

- Can use &sudo;, or a different user-specified command to install modules so that &kdesrc-build; does not need to be run as the super user.

- &kdesrc-build; runs with reduced priority by default to allow you to still use your computer while &kdesrc-build; is working.

- Has support for using &kde;'s &subversion; tags and branches.

- &kdesrc-build; will use a set of techniques to try and guarantee a successful build.

- There is support for resuming a build from a given module. You can even ignore some modules temporarily for a given build.

- &kdesrc-build; can quickly perform a partial build of a module directly from the command line, when you only need to update part of a module.

- &kdesrc-build; will show the progress of your build when using &cmake;, and will always time the build process so you know after the fact how long it took.

- Automatically tries to rebuild modules that were using incremental make, which is prone to failure after certain kinds of commits.

- Comes built-in with a sane set of default options appropriate for building a base &kde; single-user installation from the anonymous &subversion; repository.

- Tilde-expansion for your configuration options. For example, you can specify:

      qtdir ~/kdesrc/build/qt-copy

- Automatically sets up a build system, with the source directory not the same as the build directory, in order to keep the source directory pristine.

- You can specify global options to apply to every module to check out, and you can specify options to apply to individual modules as well.

- Since the autotools sometimes get out of sync with changes to the source tree, you can force a rebuild of a module by creating a file called .refresh-me in the build directory of the module in question, or by running &kdesrc-build; with the `--refresh-build` option.

- You can specify various environment values to be used during the build, including `KDEDIR`, `QTDIR`, `DO_NOT_COMPILE`, and `CXXFLAGS`.

- Command logging. Logs are dated and numbered so that you always have a log of a script run. Also, a special symlink called latest is created to always point to the most recent log entry in the log directory.

- If you are using a user build of &kde; instead of a system build (for which you must be root to install), you can use the script to install for you. I haven not audited this code, and it makes ample use of the `system()` call, so I would not recommend running it as root at this point.

- You can use make-install-prefix to prefix the ``make` `install`` command line with a separate command, which is useful for &sudo;.

- You can check out only a portion of a &kde; &subversion; module. For example, you could check out only the taglib from kdesupport, or only K3B from extragear/multimedia. The script will automatically pull in kde-common if necessary to make the build work.

- You can pretend to do the operations. If you pass `--pretend` or `-p` on the command line, the script will give a very verbose description of the commands it is about to execute, without actually executing it.

### &kdesrc-build;'s build logging

#### Logging overview

Logging is a &kdesrc-build; feature whereby the output from every command that &kdesrc-build; runs is saved to a file for examination later, if necessary. This is done because it is often necessary to have the output of these programs when there is a build failure, because there are so many reasons why a build can fail in the first place.

##### Logging directory layout

The logs are always stored under the log directory. The destination of the log directory is controlled by the log-dir option, which defaults to `${source-dir}/log` (where ${source-dir} is the value of the source-dir option. The in rest of this section, this value will be referred to as ${log-dir}).

Under ${log-dir}, is a set of directories, one for every time that &kdesrc-build; was run. Each directory is named with the date, and the run number. For instance, the second time that &kdesrc-build; is run on May 26, 2004, it would create a directory called `2004-05-26-02`, where the 2004-05-26 is for the date, and the -02 is the run number.

For your convenience, &kdesrc-build; will also create a link to the logs for your latest run, called `latest`. So the logs for the most recent &kdesrc-build; run should always be under `${log-dir}/latest`.

Now, each directory for a &kdesrc-build; run will itself contain a set of directories, one for every &kde; module that &kdesrc-build; tries to build. Also, a file called `build-status` will be contained in the directory, which will allow you to determine which modules built and which failed.

If a module itself has a submodule (such as extragear/multimedia, playground/utils, or KDE/kdelibs), then there would actually be a matching layout in the log directory. For example, the logs for KDE/kdelibs after the last &kdesrc-build; run would be found in `${log-dir}/latest/KDE/kdelibs`, and not under `${log-dir}/latest/kdelibs`.

In each module log directory, you will find a set of files for each operation that &kdesrc-build; performs. If &kdesrc-build; updates a module, you may see filenames such as `svn-co.log` (for a module checkout) or `svn-up.log` (when updating a module that has already been checked out). If the `configure` command was run, then you would expect to see a `configure.log` in that directory.

If an error occurred, you should be able to see an explanation of why in one of the files. To help you determine which file contains the error, &kdesrc-build; will create a link from the file containing the error (such as `build-1.log` to a file called `error.log`).

The upshot to all of this is that to see why a module failed to build after your last &kdesrc-build;, the file you should look at first is `${log-dir}/latest/module-name/error.log`.

If the file `error.log` is empty (especially after an installation), then perhaps there was no error. Some of the tools used by the &kde; build system will sometimes mistakenly report an error when there was none.

Also, some commands will evade &kdesrc-build;'s output redirection and bypass the log file in certain circumstances (normally when performing the first &subversion; checkout), and the error output in that case is not in the log file but is instead at the &konsole; or terminal where you ran &kdesrc-build;.

## Configuring &kdesrc-build;

### Overview of &kdesrc-build; configuration

To use the script, you must have a file in your home directory called `.kdesrc-buildrc`, which describes the modules you would like to download and build.

It starts with the global options, specified like the following:

    global
    option-name option-value
    [...]
    end global

It is then followed by one or more module sections, specified like the following:

    module module-name
    option-name option-value
    [...]
    end module

module-name must be a module from the &kde; &subversion; repository (for example, kdelibs or kdebase). Some options override global options, some add to global options, and some global options simply cannot be overridden.

The following is a list of commonly-used options. Click on the option to find out more about it. To see the full list of options, see .

- branch, to checkout from a branch instead of /trunk.

- build-dir, to set the directory to build in.

- cmake-options to define what flags to configure a module with using &cmake;.

- configure-flags to define what flags to configure a module with.

- cxxflags to define the `CXXFLAGS` variable.

- kdedir, to set the directory to install &kde; to.

- kde-languages, to set the translation packages to download and install.

- make-options, to pass options to the &make; program.

- qtdir, to set the path to &Qt;.

- set-env, to set an environment variable.

- source-dir, to change where to download the source code to.

- svn-server, to change the server the sources are downloaded from.

### Table of available configuration options

Here is a table of the various options, containing the following information:

- The option name

- A description of how &kdesrc-build; responds if the option is set in both the global section, and the module section of the configuration file while building a module.

- Special comments on the purpose and usage of the option.

#### Table of Options

Option-name | Module -> Global Behavior | Notes
--- | --- | ---

apidox

This option was used to allow for building KDE module API documentation. It was removed in &kdesrc-build; 1.6.3 due to it not being supported in KDE 4. Online API documentation is available from kde.org. In addition it is possible to build KDE 4's API documentation using a script included in the kdesdk module (/scripts directory). See KDE TechBase for more details. It is still possible to manually build API documentation for older modules of course.

apply-qt-patches |  | This option was removed in kdesrc-build 1.10. To get the same effect, see and the repository option.
async | Cannot be overridden | This option enables the asynchronous mode of operation, where the source code update and the build process will be performed in parallel, instead of waiting for all of the source code updates before starting the build process. This option defaults to enabling asynchronous mode. To disable, set this option to false This option is available since the 1.6 release.

binpath

Module setting overrides global

Set this option to set the environment variable PATH while building. You cannot override this setting in a module option. The default value is the $`PATH` that is set when the script starts. This environment variable should include the colon-separated paths of your development toolchain. The paths `$`KDEDIR`/bin` and `$`QTDIR`/bin` are automatically added. You may use the tilde (~) for any paths you add using this option.

branch

Module setting overrides global

Set this option to checkout from a branch of &kde; instead of the default of trunk, where &kde; development occurs. For instance, to checkout &kde; 4.5 branch, you would set this option to 4.5.

If &kdesrc-build; fails to properly download a branch with this option, you may have to manually specify the &url; to download from using the module-base-path or override-url options.

Note: This option also works with source modules that use &git; instead of &subversion;.

build-dir

Module setting overrides global

Use this option to change the directory to contain the built sources. There are three different ways to use it:

1. Relative to the &kde; &subversion; source directory (see the source-dir option). This is the default, and is selected if you type a directory name that does not start with a tilde (~) or a slash (/).

   The default value is `build`.

2. Absolute path. If you specify a path that begins with a /, then that path is used directly. For example, `/tmp/kde-obj-dir/`.

3. Relative to your home directory. If you specify a path that begins with a ~, then the path is used relative to your home directory, analogous to the shell's tilde-expansion. For example, `~/builddir` would set the build directory to `/home/user-name/builddir`.

Perhaps surprisingly, this option can be changed per module.

build-when-unchanged

Module setting overrides global

Use this option in order to control whether &kdesrc-build; always tries to build a module that has not had any source code updates.

By setting `build-when-unchanged` to true, &kdesrc-build; always attempts the build phase for a module, even if the module did not have any source code updates. This is the default setting since it is more likely to lead to a correct build.

By setting `build-when-unchanged` to false, &kdesrc-build; will only attempt to run the build phase for a module if the module has a source code update, or in other situations where it is likely that a rebuild is actually required. This can save time, especially if you run &kdesrc-build; daily, or more frequently.

This feature is provided as an optimization only. Like many other optimizations, there are trade-offs for the correctness of your installation. For instance, changes to the qt-copy or kdelibs modules may cause a rebuild of other modules to be necessary, even if the source code doesn't change at all.

checkout-only

Module setting overrides global

Set this option to checkout &subversion; sources piece by piece. The value for this option should be a space-separated list of directories to checkout. Although this option overrides the global option, be aware that setting this as a global option makes no sense.

Note that this setting has no effect on &git; modules due to the operation of the &git; source control system.

See for an example.

cmake-options

Appends to global options (not applicable to qt-copy)

Use this option to specify what flags to pass to &cmake; when creating the build system for the module. When this is used as a global option, it is applied to all modules that this script builds. When used as a module option, it is added to the end of the global options. This allows you to specify common &cmake; options in the global section.

This option does not apply to qt-copy (which does not use &cmake;). Use configure-flags instead.

Since these options are passed directly to the &cmake; command line, they should be given as they would be typed into &cmake;. For example:

      cmake-options -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo

Since this is a hassle, &kdesrc-build; takes pains to ensure that as long as the rest of the options are set correctly, you should be able to leave this option blank. (In other words, required &cmake; parameters are set for you automatically)

colorful-output | Cannot be overridden | Set this option to false to disable the colorful output of &kdesrc-build;. This option defaults to true. Note that &kdesrc-build; will not output the color codes to anything but a terminal (such as xterm, &konsole;, or the normal &Linux; console).
configure-flags | Module setting overrides global | Use this option to specify what flags to pass to ./configure when creating the build system for the module. When this is used as a global-option, it is applied to all modules that this script builds. This option only works for qt-copy. To change configuration settings for KDE 4 modules, see cmake-options.

cxxflags

Appends to global option

Use this option to specify what flags to use for building the module. This option is specified here instead of with configure-flags or cmake-options because this option will also set the environment variable `CXXFLAGS` during the build process.

Note that for &kde; 4 and any other modules that use &cmake;, it is necessary to set the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE option to "none" when configuring the module. This can be done using the cmake-options option.

dest-dir

Module setting overrides global

Use this option to change the name a module is given on disk. For example, if your module was extragear/network, you could rename it to extragear-network using this option. Note that although this changes the name of the module on disk, it is not a good idea to include directories or directory separators in the name as this will interfere with any build-dir or source-dir options.

disable-agent-check

Cannot be overridden

Normally if you are using &ssh; to download the &subversion; sources (such as if you are using the svn+ssh protocol), &kdesrc-build; will try and make sure that if you are using ssh-agent, it is actually managing some &ssh; identities. This is to try and prevent &ssh; from asking for your pass phrase for every module. You can disable this check by setting `disable-agent-check` to true.

do-not-compile

Module setting overrides global

Use this option to select a specific set of directories not to be built in a module (instead of all of them). The directories not to build should be space-separated.

Note that the sources to the programs will still be downloaded. You can use the checkout-only directive to choose directories that you want to check out.

For example, to hold &juk; and &kscd; in the kdemultimedia module from compiling, you would add "do-not-compile juk kscd" to your kdemultimedia settings.

See for an example.

email-address | Cannot be overridden | Set this option to the e-mail address &kdesrc-build; should send from should it ever need to send e-mail. You do not need to worry about this if you do not use any feature which send e-mail. (They are all disabled by default). Currently only email-on-compile-error needs this option.

email-on-compile-error

Cannot be overridden

You can set this option to the email address to send a report to when a module fails to build. &kdesrc-build; will wait until all the modules are done and collate all of the results in the report. The report is only sent if a module fails to build.

Please see the email-address option to set the address &kdesrc-build; should send from, since the default is usually not what you want.

inst-apps |  | This option was removed in version 1.10
install-after-build | Module setting overrides global | This option is used to install the package after it successfully builds. This option is enabled by default. If you want to disable this, you need to set this option to false in the configuration file. You can also use the `--no-install` command line flag.
kdedir | Module setting overrides global | This option sets the directory that &kde; will be installed to after it is built. It defaults to `~/kde`. If you change this to a directory needing root access, you may want to read about the make-install-prefix option as well.

kde-languages

Cannot be overridden

This option allows you to choose to download and install localization packages along with &kde;. You might do this if you do not live in the United States and would like to &kde; translated into your native language.

To use this option, set it to a space-separated list of languages to install. Each language has a language code associated with it, which you can look up at this page: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/.

It is alright to choose only one language. By default, none are downloaded, which means &kde; will display in American English.

For instance, to choose to install French, you would set the option to something like: ``kde-languages` fr`. You would still need to use &systemsettings; in order to choose the French language, however.

libpath | Module setting overrides global | Set this option to set the environment variable `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` while building. You cannot override this setting in a module option. The default value is blank, but the paths `$`KDEDIR`/lib` and `$`QTDIR`/lib` are automatically added. You may use the tilde (~) for any paths you add using this option.
log-dir | Module setting overrides global | Use this option to change the directory used to hold the log files generated by the script.
make-install-prefix | Module setting overrides global | Set this variable to a space-separated list, which is interpreted as a command and its options to precede the ``make` `install`` command used to install modules. This is useful for installing packages with &sudo; for example, but please be careful while dealing with root privileges.
make-options | Module setting overrides global | Set this variable in order to pass command line options to the `make` command. This is useful for programs such as distcc or systems with more than one processor core.
manual-build | Module setting overrides global | Set the option value to true to keep the build process from attempting to build this module. It will still be kept up-to-date when updating from &subversion;. This option is exactly equivalent to the `--no-build` command line option.
manual-update | Module setting overrides global | Set the option value to true to keep the build process from attempting to update (and by extension, build or install) this module. If you set this option for a module, then you have essentially commented it out.

module-base-path

Module setting overrides global

Set this option to override &kdesrc-build;'s default directory path to the module in question. This can be used, for example, to pull specific branches or tagged versions of libraries. The &kde; Source Viewer is invaluable in helping to pick the right path.

Note that &kdesrc-build; constructs the final path according to the following template: ``$svn-server`/home/kde/`$module-base-path``.

The default value is either `trunk/`$module`` or `trunk/KDE/`$module``, depending on the module name.

Use the branch or tag options instead whenever they are applicable.

niceness | Cannot be overridden | Set this option to a number between 20 and 0. The higher the number, the lower a priority &kdesrc-build; will set for itself, i.e. the higher the number, the "nicer" the program is. The default is 10.
no-svn | Module setting overrides global | If this option is set to true then &kdesrc-build; will not update the source code for the module automatically. It will still try to build the module if it normally would have tried anyways.
no-rebuild-on-fail |  | This option was removed in version 1.10, since this behavior no longer helps due to fixes in the underlying build system.
override-url | Module setting overrides global | If you set this option, &kdesrc-build; will use its value as the &url; to pass to &subversion; completely unchanged. You should generally use this if you want to download a specific release but &kdesrc-build; cannot figure out what you mean using branch.
prefix | Module setting overrides global | This option controls where to install the module (normally the `kdedir` setting is used). Using this option allows you to install a module to a different directory than where the KDE Platform libraries are installed, such as if you were using &kdesrc-build; only to build applications.

purge-old-logs

Module setting overrides global

This option controls whether old log directories are automatically deleted or not. The default value is false.

Even if you have not set this option to true, you can manually purge the old log directories by running:

`kdesrc-build --no-src --no-build --purge-old-logs kdelibs`

You can use any module name in the above command line, it does not have to be kdelibs.

qtdir | Module setting overrides global | Set this option to set the environment variable `QTDIR` while building. You cannot override this setting in a module option. If you do not specify this option, it defaults to `${source-dir}/build/qt-copy`, which uses the qt-copy module included in the &kde; source repository. You may use a tilde (~) to represent your home directory.

remove-after-install

Module setting overrides global

If you are low on hard disk space, you may want to use this option in order to automatically delete the build directory (or both the source and build directories for one-time installs) after the module is successfully installed.

Possible values for this option are:

- none - Do not delete anything (This is the default).

- builddir - Delete the build directory, but not the source.

- all - Delete both the source code and build directory.

Note that using this option can have a significant detrimental impact on both your bandwidth usage (if you use all) and the time taken to compile &kde;, since &kdesrc-build; will be unable to perform incremental builds.

repository | Module setting overrides global | This option was introduced with version 1.10, and is used to specify the &git; repository to download the source code for the module. &Qt; (and therefore qt-copy) would need this option, as well as various &kde; modules that are in the process of conversion to use &git;.
revision | Module setting overrides global | If this option is set to a value other than 0 (zero), &kdesrc-build; will force the &subversion; update to bring the module to the exact revision given, even if options like branch are in effect. If the module is already at the given revision then it will not be updated further unless this option is changed or removed from the configuration.
run-tests | Module setting overrides global | If set to true, then the module will be built with support for running its test suite, and the test suite will be executed as part of the build process. &kdesrc-build; will show a simple report of the test results. This is useful for developers or those who want to ensure their system is setup correctly.

set-env

Module setting overrides global

This option accepts a space-separated set of values, where the first value is the environment variable to set, and the rest of the values is what you want the variable set to. For example, to set the variable `RONALD` to McDonald, you would put in the appropriate section this command:

    set-env RONALD McDonald

This option is special in that it can be repeated without overriding earlier set-env settings in the same section of the configuration file. This way you can set more than one environment variable per module (or globally).

source-dir | Module setting overrides global | This option is used to set the directory on your computer to store the &kde; &subversion; sources at. If you do not specify this value, the default is `~/kdesrc`. You may use the tilde (~) to represent the home directory if using this option.
stop-on-failure | Module setting overrides global | Set this option value to true to cause the script to stop execution after an error occurs during the build or install process. This option is off by default.
svn-server | Module setting overrides global | This option is used to set the server used to check out from &subversion;. The default is the anonymous &subversion; repository, `svn://anonsvn.kde.org/` If you are developing for KDE, use the &subversion; repository that was provided to you when you received your developer account, instead of the anonymous repository.
tag | Module setting overrides global | Use this option to download a specific release of a module. Note: The odds are very good that you do not want to use this option. &kde; releases are available in tarball form from The &kde; FTP site or one of its mirrors.
use-cmake |  | This option was removed in &kdesrc-build; 1.4 as all &kde; 4 modules require &cmake;, and &cmake; use is not permitted on any other modules.
use-idle-io-priority | Cannot be overridden | This option, added in &kdesrc-build; 1.12, will cause a lower priority to be used for disk and other I/O usage, which can significantly improve the responsiveness of the rest of the system at the expense of slightly longer running times for &kdesrc-build;. The default is to be disabled, to enable the lower disk priority set this to true.
use-qt-builddir-hack | Module setting overrides global | This option has been removed due to improvements in the &Qt; build system.
use-stable-kde |  | This option was removed in version 1.10, which limits support to KDE 4, removing the effect of this option.

## Command Line Options and Environment Variables

### Supported Environment Variables

&kdesrc-build; does not use environment variables. If you need to set environment variables for the build or install process, please see the set-env option.

### Supported command-line parameters

The script accepts the following command-line options:

`--async`

  Enables the asynchronous mode, which can perform the source code updates and module builds at the same time. This is the default, this option only needs specified if you have disabled it in the configuration.

`--help`

  Only display simple help on this script.

`--version`

  Display the program version.

`--author`

  Display contact information for the author.

`--color`

  Enable colorful output. (This is the default for interactive terminals).

`--nice=value`

  This value adjusts the computer CPU priority requested by &kdesrc-build;, and should be in the range of 0-20. 0 is highest priority (because it is the least nice), 20 is lowest priority. &kdesrc-build; defaults to 10.

`--no-async`

  Disables the asynchronous mode of updating. Instead the update will be performed in its entirety before the build starts. This option will slow down the overall process, but if you encounter IPC errors while running &kdesrc-build; try using this option, and submitting a bug report.

`--no-color`

  Disable colorful output.

`--pretend` (or `-p`)

  &kdesrc-build; will run through the update and build process, but instead of performing any actions to update or build, will instead output what the script would have done (e.g. what commands to run, general steps being taken, etc.).

  Note: Simple read-only commands (such as reading file information) may still be run to make the output more relevant (such as correctly simulating whether source code would be checked out or updated).

`--quiet` (or `-q`)

  Do not be as noisy with the output. With this switch only the basics are output.

`--really-quiet`

  Only output warnings and errors.

`--verbose` (or `-v`)

  Be very descriptive about what is going on, and what &kdesrc-build; is doing.

`--src-only` (or `--svn-only`)

  Only perform the source update. (The `--svn-only` is only supported for compatibility with older scripts).

`--build-only`

  Only perform the build process.

`--ignore-modules`

  Do not include the modules passed on the rest of the command line in the update/build process (this is useful if you want to build most of the modules in your configuration file and just skip a few).

`--no-src` (or `--no-svn`)

  Skip contacting the &subversion; server. (The `--no-svn` parameter is only supported for compatibility with older versions of the script).

`--no-build`

  Skip the build process.

`--no-install`

  Do not automatically install packages after they are built.

`--no-build-when-unchanged`
`--force-build`

  This option explicitly disables skipping the build process (an optimization controlled by the build-when-unchanged option). This is useful for making &kdesrc-build; run the build when you have changed something that &kdesrc-build; cannot check.

  `--force-build` performs the exact same function, and is perhaps easier to remember.

`--debug`

  Enables debug mode for the script. Currently this means that all output will be dumped to the standard output in addition to being logged in the log directory like normal. Also, many functions are much more verbose about what they are doing in debugging mode.

`--no-rebuild-on-fail`

  Do not try to rebuild modules that have failed building from scratch. &kdesrc-build; will never try to do this to a module that already was tried to be built from scratch.

`--refresh-build`

  Recreate the build system and make from scratch.

`--reconfigure`

  Run `cmake` (for &kde; modules) or `configure` (for &Qt;) again, without cleaning the build directory. You should not normally have to specify this, as &kdesrc-build; will detect when you change the relevant options and automatically re-run the build setup. This option is implied if `--refresh-build` is used.

`--resume-from`

  This option is used to resume the build starting from the given module, which should be the next option on the command line. This option implies `--no-src`. You should not specify other module names on the command line.

  See also: and . You would prefer to use this command line option if you have fixed the build error and want &kdesrc-build; to complete the build.

`--resume-after`

  This option is used to resume the build starting after the given module, which should be the next option on the command line. This option implies `--no-src`. You should not specify other module names on the command line.

  See also: and . You would prefer to use this command line option if you have fixed the build error and have also built and installed the module yourself, and want &kdesrc-build; to start again with the next module.

`--rc-file`

  This interprets the next command line parameter as the file to read the configuration options from. The default value for this parameter is `kdesrc-buildrc` (checked in the current directory) if it is present, or `~/.kdesrc-buildrc` otherwise. See also .

`--run`

  This option interprets the next item on the command line as a program to run, and &kdesrc-build; will then finish reading the configuration file, update the environment as normal, and then execute the given program.

  This will not work to start a shell with the &kdesrc-build; environment in most cases however, since interactive shells typically reset at least part of the environment variables (such as `PATH` and `KDEDIRS`) in the startup sequence.

  If you want to see the environment used by &kdesrc-build;, you can run the `printenv` command:

      $ kdesrc-build --run printenv
      KDE_SESSION_VERSION=4
      SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa
      LANGUAGE=
      XCURSOR_THEME=Oxygen_Blue
      LESS=-R -M --shift 5
      QMAIL_CONTROLDIR=/var/qmail/control
      ... etc.

`--prefix=</path/to/kde>`

  This allows you to change the directory that &kde; will be installed to from the command line. This option implies `--reconfigure`, but using `--refresh-build` may still be required.

`--revision`

  This option causes &kdesrc-build; to checkout a specific numbered revision for each &subversion; module, overriding any branch, tag, or revision options already set for these modules.

  This option is likely not a good idea, and is only supported for compatibility with older scripts.

`--build-system-only`

  This option causes &kdesrc-build; to abort building a module just before the `make` command would have been run. This is supported for compatibility with older versions only, this effect is not helpful for the current &kde; build system.

`--install`

  If this is the only command-line option, it tries to install all of the modules contained in `log/latest/build-status`. If command-line options are specified after `--install`, they are all assumed to be modules to install (even if they did not successfully build on the last run).

`--purge-old-logs`

  This option causes &kdesrc-build; to delete unneeded log directories after the build, to save disk space. All log directories that are not needed to satisfy a link from `log/latest` will be deleted. This is disabled by default. To enable this option by default, see the purge-old-logs option.

`--no-snapshots`

  Supplying this option causes &kdesrc-build; to always prefer a &subversion; initial checkout of a module instead of using a &subversion; module snapshot.

  Module snapshots are real &subversion; checkouts. You should not need to specify this option, it is only a troubleshooting aid.

`--<option-name>=`

  You can use this option to override an option in your configuration file for every module. For instance, to override the log-dir option, you would do: ``--log-dir=`/path/to/dir```.

`--<module-name>,<option-name>=`

  You can use this option to override an option in your configuration file for a specific module.

Any other command-line options are assumed to be modules to update and build. Please, do not mix building with installing.

## Using &kdesrc-build;

### Preface

Normally using &kdesrc-build; after you have gone through is as easy as doing the following from a terminal prompt:

    &percnt; kdesrc-build

&kdesrc-build; will then download the sources for &kde;, try to configure and build them, and then install them.

Read on to discover how &kdesrc-build; does this, and what else you can do with this tool.

### Basic &kdesrc-build; features

#### qt-copy support

&kdesrc-build; supports building the &Qt; toolkit used by &kde; software as a convenience to users. This support is handled by a special module named qt-copy.

&Qt; is developed under a separate repository from &kde; software located at http://qt.gitorious.org/qt.

In order to build &Qt;, you should make sure that the qtdir setting is set to the directory you'd like to install &Qt; to, as described in .

You should then ensure that the qt-copy module is added to your `.kdesrc-buildrc`, before any other modules in the file. If you are using the sample configuration file, you can simply uncomment the existing qt-copy module entry.

Now you should verify the repository option and branch options are set appropriately:

1. The first option is to build with a grouping of recommended bug fix and optimization patches applied (this used to be controlled using an option called apply-patches). This collection is developed in a separate repository at http://gitorious.org/+kde-developers/qt/kde-qt. If you would like to build with patches applied (most &kde; developers do) then you should set your repository option to `git://gitorious.org/+kde-developers/qt/kde-qt.git`

2. Otherwise, to build the standard &Qt;, set your repository option to `git://gitorious.org/qt/qt.git`

In both cases, the branch option should be set to `master` (unless you'd like to build a different branch).

In some cases the underlying source control software is unable to work when run from &kdesrc-build;, but will still work fine when run from the command prompt. This bug is still under investigation.

#### Standard flags added by &kdesrc-build;

To save you time, &kdesrc-build; adds some standard paths to your environment for you:

- The path to the &kde; and &Qt; libraries is added to the `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` variable automatically. This means that you do not need to edit &libpath; to include them.

- The path to the &kde; and &Qt; development support programs are added to the `PATH` variable automatically. This means that you do not need to edit &binpath; to include them.

- The path to the &kde;-provided pkg-config is added automatically to `PKG_CONFIG_PATH`. This means that you do not need to use &set-env; to add these.

- The setting for &kdedir; is automatically propagated to the `KDEDIR` environment variable while building. (`KDEDIRS` is not affected).

- The setting for &qtdir; is automatically propagated to the `QTDIR` environment variable while building.

#### Changing &kdesrc-build;'s build priority

Programs can run with different priority levels on Operating Systems, including &Linux; and &BSD;. This allows the system to allocate time for the different programs in accordance with how important they are.

&kdesrc-build; will normally allocate itself a low priority so that the rest of the programs on your system are unaffected and can run normally. Using this technique, &kdesrc-build; will use extra CPU when it is available.

&kdesrc-build; will still maintain a high enough priority level so that it runs before routine batch processes and before CPU donation programs such as Seti@Home.

To alter &kdesrc-build; so that it uses a higher (or lower) priority level permanently, then you need to adjust the &niceness; setting in the configuration file. The &niceness; setting controls how nice &kdesrc-build; is to other programs. In other words, having a higher &niceness; gives &kdesrc-build; a lower priority. So to give &kdesrc-build; a higher priority, reduce the &niceness; (and vice versa). The &niceness; can go from 0 (not nice at all, highest priority) to 20 (super nice, lowest priority).

You can also temporarily change the priority for &kdesrc-build; by using the &cmd-nice; command line option. The value to the option is used exactly the same as for &niceness;.

It is possible for some programs run by the super user to have a negative nice value, with a correspondingly even higher priority for such programs. Setting a negative (or even 0) &niceness; for &kdesrc-build; is not a great idea, as it will not help run time significantly, but will make your computer seem very sluggish should you still need to use it.

To run &kdesrc-build; with a niceness of 15 (a lower priority than normal):

    &percnt; kdesrc-build --nice=15

Or, you can edit the configuration file to make the change permanent:

        &niceness; 15

The niceness option only affects the usage of the computer's processor(s). One other major affect on computer performance relates to how much data input or output (I/O) a program uses. In order to control how much I/O a program can use, modern &Linux; operating systems support a similar tool called ionice. &kdesrc-build; supports ionice, (but only to enable or disable it completely) using the use-idle-io-priority option, since &kdesrc-build; version 1.12.

#### Installation as the superuser

You may wish to have &kdesrc-build; run the installation with super user privileges. This may be for the unrecommended system-wide installation. This is also useful when using a recommended single user &kde; build, however. This is because some modules (especially kdebase) install programs that will briefly need elevated permissions when run. They are not able to achieve these permission levels unless they are installed with the elevated permissions.

You could simply run &kdesrc-build; as the super user directly, but this is not recommended, since the program has not been audited for that kind of use. Although it should be safe to run the program in this fashion, it is better to avoid running as the super user when possible.

To take care of this, &kdesrc-build; provides the &make-install-prefix; option. You can use this option to specify a command to use to perform the installation as another user. The recommended way to use this command is with the &sudo; program, which will run the install command as the super user.

For example, to install all modules using &sudo;, you could do something like this:

    global
      &make-install-prefix; sudo
      # Other options
    end global

To use &make-install-prefix; for only a single module, this would work:

    module kdemultimedia
      &make-install-prefix; sudo
    end module

#### Showing the progress of a module build

This feature is always available, and is automatically enabled when possible. What this does is display an estimated build progress while building a module; that way you know about how much longer it will take to build a module.

### Advanced features

#### Partially building a module

It is possible to build only pieces from a single &kde; module. For example, you may want to compile only one program from a module. &kdesrc-build; has features to make this easy. There are several complementing ways to do this.

##### Checking out portions of a module

This is perhaps the best way to do this. When it works, it will save you download time and disk space. What happens is that &kdesrc-build; will download only the parts of a module that you specify. This is done using the &checkout-only; option for a module, which will specify a list of directories to download.

If you do not already know what to download from a module, it may be a good idea to browse the &subversion; layout for a module first, using WebSVN.

To only grab &kuser; and KSystemLog from kdeadmin, you could use &checkout-only; like this:

    module kdeadmin
      &checkout-only; kuser ksystemlog
    end module

The directories will be built in the order they are listed in the option. If one of the directories needs something else from the module to compile, then you need to make sure they are both in the &checkout-only; line, and that the required dependency goes before the directory that needs it.

Also, sometimes an application may need other directories and it is hard to figure out what they are, which may require some trial and error of constantly adding directories to the option to figure out. This option depends on support from the build system of the module, so it is only useful for modules that are collections of individual applications.

One final note to make about this option: If you change the value of this option, you should use ``kdesrc-build` `&cmd-refresh-build;` `module`` in order to ensure that the module is reconfigured properly. In addition, &kdesrc-build; will never remove existing files if you take away the number of directories from your &checkout-only; option, or add the option to a module that has already been checked out.

##### Removing directories from a build

Instead of restricting what is downloaded, it is possible to download everything but have the build system leave out a few directories when it does the build. This may be useful if one directory always breaks and is unnecessary to the rest of the module.

This is controlled with the &do-not-compile; option. It works similar to the &checkout-only; option just described, in that it is simply a list of directories that should not be compiled.

Also like &checkout-only;, this option requires at least that the build system for the module is reconfigured after changing it. This is done using the ``kdesrc-build` `&cmd-reconfigure;` `module`` command.

To remove the `python` directory from the kdebindings build process:

    module kdebindings
      &do-not-compile; python
    end module

This function depends on some standard conventions used in most &kde; modules. Therefore it may not work for all programs.

#### Branching and tagging support for &kdesrc-build;

##### What are branches and tags?

&subversion; supports managing the history of the &kde; source code. &kde; uses this support to create branches for development, and to tag the repository every so often with a new version release.

For example, the &kmail; developers may be working on a new feature in a different branch in order to avoid breaking the version being used by most developers. This branch has development ongoing inside it, even while the main branch (called /trunk) may have development going on inside of it.

A tag, on the other hand, is a snapshot of the source code repository at a position in time. This is used by the &kde; administration team to mark off a version of code suitable for release and still allow the developers to work on the code.

In &subversion;, there is no difference between branches, tags, or trunk within the code. It is only a convention used by the developers. This makes it difficult to properly support branches and tags within &kdesrc-build;. However, there are some things that can be done.

##### How to use branches and tags

Support for branches and tags is handled by a set of options, which range from a generic request for a version, to a specific &url; to download for advanced users.

The easiest method is to use the &branch; and &tag; options. You simply use the option along with the name of the desired branch or tag for a module, and &kdesrc-build; will try to determine the appropriate location within the &kde; repository to download from. For most &kde; modules this works very well.

To download kdelibs from &kde; 4.5 (which is simply known as the 4.5 branch):

    module kdelibs
      branch 4.5
      # other options...
    end module

Or, to download kdemultimedia as it was released with &kde; 4.5.1:

    module kdemultimedia
      tag 4.5.1
      # other options...
    end module

You can specify a global branch value. But if you do so, do not forget to specify a different branch for modules that should not use the global branch!

##### Advanced branch support options

&kdesrc-build; supports two options for situations where &branch; and &tag; guess the correct path improperly: &module-base-path; and &override-url;.

- &module-base-path; is used to help &kdesrc-build; fill in the missing part of a module's path. In the &kde; repository, all of the paths are of the form `svnRoot/module-base-path/module-name`. Normally &kdesrc-build; can figure out the appropriate middle part by itself. When it cannot, you can use &module-base-path;, like this:

      module kdesupport
          # kdesupport supports various tags to easily organize the required
          # software for a given KDE Platform release.
          module-base-path tags/kdesupport-for-4.5
      end module

  This would cause &kdesrc-build; to download kdesupport from (in this example), `svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/tags/kdesupport-for-4.5`.

  In previous versions of &kdesrc-build;, the &module-base-path; was handled differently. If you encounter trouble using an old module-base-path definition perhaps you should verify that the actual path is as &kdesrc-build; expects by using the --pretend option.

- The &override-url; option, on the other hand, requires you to specify the exact path to download from. However, this allows you to pull from paths that previous versions of &kdesrc-build; would have no hope of downloading from. Currently, the &module-base-path; option should be sufficient for any Subversion source URL.

  &kdesrc-build; will not touch or correct the value you specify for &override-url; at all, so if you change your &svn-server; setting, you may need to update this as well.

#### How &kdesrc-build; tries to ensure a successful build

##### Automatic rebuilds

&kdesrc-build; used to include features to automatically attempt to rebuild the module after a failure (as sometimes this re-attempt would work, due to bugs in the build system at that time). Thanks to switching to &cmake; the build system no longer suffers from these bugs, and so &kdesrc-build; will not try to build a module more than once. There are situations where &kdesrc-build; will automatically take action though:

- If you change configure-flags or cmake-options for a module, then &kdesrc-build; will detect that and automatically re-run configure or cmake for that module.

- If the buildsystem does not exist (even if &kdesrc-build; did not delete it) then &kdesrc-build; will automatically re-create it. This is useful to allow for performing a full --refresh-build for a specific module without having that performed on other modules.

##### Manually rebuilding a module

If you make a change to a module's option settings, or the module's source code changes in a way &kdesrc-build; does not recognize, you may need to manually rebuild the module.

You can do this by simply running ``kdesrc-build` `--refresh-build` `module``.

If you would like to have &kdesrc-build; automatically rebuild the module during the next normal build update instead, you can create a special file. Every module has a build directory. If you create a file called `.refresh-me` in the build directory for a module, &kdesrc-build; will rebuild the module next time the build process occurs, even if it would normally perform the faster incremental build.

By default, the build directory is `~/kdesrc/build/module/`. If you change the setting of the &build-dir; option, then use that instead of `~/kdesrc/build`.

Rebuild using `.refresh-me` for module kdelibs:

    % touch ~/kdesrc/build/kdelibs.refresh-me
    % kdesrc-build

#### Changing environment variable settings

Normally &kdesrc-build; uses the environment that is present when starting up when running programs to perform updates and builds. This is useful for when you are running &kdesrc-build; from the command line.

However, you may want to change the setting for environment variables that &kdesrc-build; does not provide an option for directly. (For instance, to setup any required environment variables when running &kdesrc-build; on a timer such as &cron;) This is possible with the &set-env; option.

Unlike most options, it can be set more than once, and it accepts two entries, separated by a space. The first one is the name of the environment variable to set, and the remainder of the line is the value.

Set ``DISTRO`=BSD` for all modules:

    global
      set-env DISTRO BSD
    end global

#### Resuming builds

##### Resuming a failed or canceled build

You can tell &kdesrc-build; to start building from a different module than it normally would. This can be useful when a set of modules failed, or if you canceled a build run in the middle. You can control this using the &cmd-resume-from; option and the &cmd-resume-after; option.

Using either of the resume options will skip the source code update.

Resuming the build starting from kdebase:

    % kdesrc-build --resume-from=kdebase

Resuming the build starting after kdebase (in case you manually fixed the issue and installed the module yourself):

    % kdesrc-build --resume-after=kdebase

##### Ignoring modules in a build

Similar to the way you can resume the build from a module, you can instead choose to update and build everything normally, but ignore a set of modules.

You can do this using the &cmd-ignore-modules; option. This option tells &kdesrc-build; to ignore all the modules on the command line when performing the update and build.

Ignoring extragear/multimedia and kdereview during a full run:

    % kdesrc-build --ignore-modules extragear/multimedia kdereview

#### Changing options from the command line

##### Changing global options

You can change the setting of options read from the configuration file directly from the command line. This change will override the configuration file setting, but is only temporary. It only takes effect as long as it is still present on the command line.

&kdesrc-build; allows you to change options named like option-name by passing an argument on the command line in the form ``--option-name=value``. &kdesrc-build; will recognize whether it does not know what the option is, and search for the name in its list of option names. If it does not recognize the name, it will warn you, otherwise it will remember the value you set it to and override any setting from the configuration file.

Setting the &source-dir; option to `/dev/null` for testing:

    % kdesrc-build --pretend --source-dir=/dev/null

##### Changing module options

It is also possible to change options only for a specific module. The syntax is similar: --module,option-name=value.

This change overrides any duplicate setting for the module found in the configuration file, and applies only while the option is passed on the command line.

Using a different build directory for the kdeedu module:

    % kdesrc-build --kdeedu,build-dir=temp-build

### Features for &kde; developers

#### &ssh; Agent checks

&kdesrc-build; can ensure that &kde; developers that use &ssh; to access the &kde; source repository do not accidentally forget to leave the &ssh; Agent tool enabled. This can cause &kdesrc-build; to hang indefinitely waiting for the developer to type in their &ssh; password, so by default &kdesrc-build; will check if the Agent is running before performing source updates.

This is only done for &kde; developers using &ssh;. This is because no password is required for the default anonymous checkout. &subversion; will handle passwords for the second possible protocol for &kde; developers, https.

You may wish to disable the &ssh; Agent check, in case of situations where &kdesrc-build; is mis-detecting the presence of an agent. To disable the agent check, set the `disable-agent-check` option to true.

Disabling the &ssh; agent check:

    global
      disable-agent-check true
    end global

### Other &kdesrc-build; features

#### Changing the amount of output from &kdesrc-build;

&kdesrc-build; has several options to control the amount of output the script generates. In any case, errors will always be output.

- The `--quiet` option (short form is `-q`) causes &kdesrc-build; to be mostly silent. Only important messages, warnings, or errors will be shown. When available, build progress information is still shown.

- The `--really-quiet` option (no short form) causes &kdesrc-build; to only display important warnings or errors while it is running.

- The `--verbose` option (short form is `-v`) causes &kdesrc-build; to be very detailed in its output.

- The `--debug` option is for debugging purposes only, it causes &kdesrc-build; to act as if `--verbose` was turned on, causes commands to also output to the terminal, and will display debugging information for many functions.

#### Color output

When being run from &konsole; or a different terminal, &kdesrc-build; will normally display with colorized text.

You can disable this by using the `--no-color` on the command line, or by setting the &colorful-output; option in the configuration file to false.

Disabling color output in the configuration file:

    global
      colorful-output false
    end global

#### E-mailing build failure reports

&kdesrc-build; can send a e-mail report to an e-mail address of your choice when a module fails to build for whatever reason. The way it works is that you choose an e-mail address that &kdesrc-build; will send from, and an e-mail address to notify when there is an error.

&kdesrc-build; will then, at the end of a complete run, construct an e-mail if there were any modules that failed to build. The e-mail will contain an abbreviated failure log for each module. Only one e-mail is sent for a run, even if 15 modules failed to build.

This feature is not enabled by default. To enable it, you need to set both the &email-address; and &email-on-compile-error; options. `email-address` controls the address &kdesrc-build; sends from, and `email-on-compile-error` controls where to send the e-mail message to.

&kdesrc-build; uses the Perl-standard Mail::Mailer module to send e-mail. It is included with Perl 5.8, and is installable with Perl 5.6. Mail::Mailer supports Sendmail (including Sendmail-compatible e-mail clients), native SMTP transport, and qmail.

Sending email from foo@example.com to bar@example.com on a build failure:

    global
      email-address          foo@example.com    # From: address for any kdesrc-build e-mail
      email-on-compile-error bar@example.com    # To: address for build failure e-mail
    end global

#### Removing unneeded directories after a build

Are you short on disk space but still want to run a bleeding-edge &kde; checkout? &kdesrc-build; can help reduce your disk usage when building &kde; from &subversion;.

Be aware that building &kde; does take a lot of space. There are several major space-using pieces when using &kdesrc-build;:

1. The actual source checkout can take up a fair amount of space. The default modules take up about 1.6 gigabytes of on-disk space. You can reduce this amount by making sure that you are only building as many modules as you actually want. &kdesrc-build; will not delete source code from disk even if you delete the entry from the configuration file, so make sure that you go and delete unused source checkouts from the source directory. Note that the source files are downloaded from the Internet, you should not delete them if you are actually using them, at least until you are done using &kdesrc-build;.

   Also, if you already have a &Qt; installed by your distribution (and the odds are good that you do), you probably do not need to install the qt-copy module. That will shave about 200 megabytes off of the on-disk source size.

   One thing to note is that due to the way &subversion; works: there are actually two files on disk for every file checked-out from the repository. &kdesrc-build; does not have code at this point to try and minimize the source size when the source is not being used.

2. &kdesrc-build; will create a separate build directory to build the source code in. Sometimes &kdesrc-build; will have to copy a source directory to create a fake build directory. When this happens, space-saving symlinks are used, so this should not be a hassle on disk space. The build directory will typically be much larger than the source directory for a module. For example, the build directory for kdebase is about 1050 megabytes, whereas kdebase's source is only around 550 megabytes.

   Luckily, the build directory is not required after a module has successfully been built and installed. &kdesrc-build; can automatically remove the build directory after installing a module, see the examples below for more information. Note that taking this step will make it impossible for &kdesrc-build; to perform the time-saving incremental builds.

3. Finally, there is disk space required for the actual installation of &kde;, which does not run from the build directory. This typically takes less space than the build directory. It is harder to get exact figures however.

How do you reduce the space requirements of &kde;? One way is to use the proper compiler flags, to optimize for space reduction instead of for speed. Another way, which can have a large effect, is to remove debugging information from your &kde; build.

You should be very sure you know what you are doing before deciding to remove debugging information. Running bleeding-edge software means you are running software which is potentially much more likely to crash than a stable release. If you are running software without debugging information, it can be very hard to create a good bug report to get your bug resolved, and you will likely have to re-enable debugging information for the affected application and rebuild to help a developer fix the crash. So, remove debugging information at your own risk!

Removing the build directory after installation of a module. The source directory is still kept, and debugging is enabled:

    global
      configure-flags      --enable-debug
      remove-after-install builddir        # Remove build directory after install
    end global

Removing the build directory after installation, without debugging information, with size optimization.

    global
      cxxflags             -Os             # Optimize for size
      configure-flags      --disable-debug
      remove-after-install builddir        # Remove build directory after install
    end global

## &cmake;, the &kde; 4 build system

### Introduction to &cmake;

In March 2006, the &cmake; program beat out several competitors and was selected to be the build system for &kde; 4, replacing the autotools-based system that &kde; has used from the beginning.

A introduction to &cmake; page is available on the &kde; TechBase. Basically, instead of running ``make` `-f` `Makefile.cvs``, then `configure`, then &make;, we simply run &cmake; and then &make;.

&kdesrc-build; has support for &cmake;. A few features of &kdesrc-build; were really features of the underlying buildsystem, including configure-flags and do-not-compile. When equivalent features are available, they are provided. For instance, the equivalent to the configure-flags option is cmake-options, and the do-not-compile option is also supported for &cmake; as of &kdesrc-build; version 1.6.3.

## Credits And Licenses

&underFDL;