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### 1. Introduction

As everything on earth has it's fashions, today's computer world seems to tend more to the use of free software even for commercial purpose. The most popular free software project is Linux. It is now generally agreed that Linux, (as well as other projects such as the Apache web server, the Perl language and GNU suite of tools), proves that free software can be of as high a quality as commercial software. But despite the quality, end users must still suffer under the cryptic commands of any Unix Systems.For Linux to thrive, it needs applications, both free and commercial, and ease of use.

The KDE project tries to close this gap by providing an easy to use desktop and the companion libraries to extend the variety of available GUI-based software. But especially as free software is often made in the author's free time, the question for many programmers is how much they like the current code development environment. KDevelop wants to take another major step: making the programmer's life easier and more efficient: products created with KDevelop can reach a higher level of reliability and functionality in the same development period.

To fulfill this goal, the KDevelop Integrated Development Environment provides many features that developers need as well as it wraps the functionality of third party projects such as `make` and the GNU C++ Compilers and makes them an invisible, integrated part of the development process. KDevelop manages:

- All development tools needed for C++ programming like Compiler, Linker, automake and autoconf,
- KAppWizard, which generates complete, ready-to-go sample applications,
- Classgenerator, for creating new classes and integrating them into the current project,
- File management for sources, headers, documentation etc. to be included in the project,
- The creation of User-Handbooks written with SGML and the automatic generation of HTML-output with the KDE look and feel,
- Automatic HTML-based API-documentation for your project's classes with cross-references to the used libraries,
- Internationalization support for your application, allowing translators to easily add their target language to a project,
- WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) -creation of user interfaces with a built-in dialog editor,
- managing your project via CVS by providing an easy-to-use frontend for the most needed functions,
- Debugging your application by integrating KDbg,
- Editing of project-specific pixmaps with KIconEdit,
- The inclusion of any other program you need for development by adding it to the "Tools"-menu according to your individual needs.

KDevelop makes it a joy to work with all programs in one place and saves time by automating standard development processes as well as giving you direct and transparent access to all information you need. The integrated browsing mechanisms are designed to support documentation requests that developers have in conjunction with their project.

The class viewer and error finder bring you anywhere in the project code with a mouse click without needing to search for files; File trees give direct access to the project files and the integrated help system offers superb access to online-documentation from anywhere within the IDE.

### 1.1 Changes

Version 1.0 of KDevelop comes along with the most needed facilities for C/C++ development. During the development phase of KDevelop, the project made great improvements since the 0.1 release followed by the 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 releases; each of them were tested and bugs fixed. We believe that the current version is to be expected as the final release for the KDE 1.x series, giving developers the environment they want to use.

Improvements were made in the following sections:

- fast classparser and -browser with graphical class-tree view and dialog-based adding of members and classes,
- CVS support for most needed functions such as adding, removing, updating and committing files and directories,
- updated and extended documentation, now covering five handbooks shipping with KDevelop,
- bugfixed classparser, dialogeditor and errorfinder.

Any comments about the IDE, its documentation or feature requests are welcome.

### 1.2 About this Handbook

This user manual gives the user a complete overview of the KDevelop IDE and describes the basic development process in brief. For more information about specific programming issues, we suggest reading the KDevelop Programming Handbook included with KDevelop, which covers themes such as understanding generated application frameworks and how to create full-featured KDE applications using example projects.

The design of this handbook is therefore separated into the following parts:

- Chapter Installation, covers the system requirements, installation and setting up of the KDevelop IDE.
- Chapter Programs, tells you how programs are created with standard GNU development tools and how they are built.
- Chapter Development with KDevelop, takes you on a short tour describing the main functionality of the environment.
- Chapter Overview, explains the menus and dialogs as well as keyboard shortcuts.
- Chapter The Help System, shows how to use the built-in documentation browser and additional help functions.
- Chapter Working with the Editor, explains the features of file management and editing.
- Chapter Projects, describes the creation and maintaining of software projects.
- Chapter Build Settings, contains a reference on how to set Compiler and liker flags as well as project options.
- Chapter The Class Browser, tells you how to make use of KDevelop's powerful Class Browser.
- Chapter The Dialog Editor, features the integrated visual GUI constructor and how it generates C++ output.
- Chapter General Configuration shows how you can set overall preferences for using KDevelop.
- Chapter Questions and Answers, covers questions that regard to the usage of KDevelop under different flavors of Unix systems and problem solutions in general.

For programming beginners and new users of this product we recommend to read yourself into this manual before starting to actually work with the IDE as it covers the usage in depth. The understanding of how things are done the quickest way will save you a lot of time searching for functions and features as it will enable you to make use of first-class development tools even more simple.

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