kdesrc-build is a tool to allow you to easily build KDE from its source repositories. (It used to be called kdesvn-build, the name was changed to this more generic form in June 2010 when KDE started adopting git-based source control).

Latest Release: kdesrc-build 1.14.1

Latest News:

2011-Sep-21

kdesrc-build 1.14.1 has been released. This release mainly contains a new feature to allow kdesrc-build to automatically remove old source directories from pre-1.14 kdesrc-build checkouts, which was causing errors for 1.14 users, and a couple of other minor bugfixes. See the release page for full details.

2011-Sep-17

kdesrc-build 1.14 has been released. This release contains quite a few minor feature additions and bugfixes, and starts on reorganizing the internal structure of the code for ease of maintainability. In addition the standard updates to the sample configuration file have been made to account for changes in the KDE source repository layout. See the release page for full details.

2011-Feb-27

kdesrc-build 1.13 has been released. This release contains support for the KDE module project database to allow for building groups of modules based on their grouping in the module database. Many other minor new features, adjustments, and bugfixes are included. See the release page for full details.

The major items I'd like to achieve in the next release are to move the "standard/sample" configuration file into git to make it easier to keep up-to-date with changes to the kdesrc-buildrc-sample, and to add dependency information in git so that modules built from projects.kde.org are built in a proper order.

2011-Feb-24

kdesrc-build itself has moved to projects.kde.org-based git infrastructure, as of a couple of weeks ago. There has been a great deal of activity since, especially in order to support detecting and building modules from the projects.kde.org database.

In addition, other KDE software continues to migrate to KDE's git infrastructure, so if you have software stop building please look at the latest update to kdesrc-buildrc-sample as a guide toward how you should update.

This will get better in the future for a couple of reasons:

1. Although not planned for the very next release (1.13), I plan on having kdesrc-build use a git-hosted "default template" kdesrc-buildrc, which would be kept up-to-date by myself and other KDE developers just as the current kdesrc-buildrc-sample is kept up-to-date. In this case however, kdesrc-build would actually learn about any changes on every source update.
2. kdesrc-build's support of the projects.kde.org database means that it will be possible to build changed modules by using the updated database directly. It is not /quite/ as simple as just building modules from the database, as things like dependency tracking have to be added to kdesrc-build to make it work in all cases.

2011-Jan-18

kdesrc-build 1.12.1 has been released. This release contains many bugfixes (especially to the sample configuration file). The most notable new feature is support for module sets, which allow you to easily declare git-based modules.

This is especially useful as KDE migrates more and more to using git.kde.org for project development. Many of the older Subversion modules are being split in the process to allow for fine-grained development.

These module splits have the side effect of drastically increasing the number of modules that must be built in order to get a working desktop! Module sets are my first attempt at mitigating this by allowing you to easily declare modules to be built.

My next attempt will be to integrate support for the KDE Project database directly into kdesrc-build, since the project database keeps itself updated on-the-fly with what git modules belong to a given KDE project. Stay tuned...

Features

• Will automatically checkout and update the KDE source code from its source repository. Both Subversion and git repository types are supported.
• Easily supports building specific branches, tags, or even revisions of a module (or all of KDE).
• Supports speedy initial checkouts of modules (KDE Git projectsonly) by using the snapshots already available on the KDE project network.
• Supports a "dry run" mode (the --pretend) option so that you can experiment with different settings non-destructively.
• kdesrc-build can download modules (both initial checkout and updates) even while building modules that have already been updated.
• kdesrc-build supports uninstalling modules (manually, or prior to installing an already-installed module) in order to keep the install directory clean. Note that this feature requires CMake support and is still experimental.
• kdesrc-build logs everything for easy perusal later, that way you can determine why things went wrong if a build fails. kdesrc-build automatically creates symlinks for easy access to the last log (log/latest).
• color-coding of the output (which can be turned off)
• Has support for building Nokia's Qt library, which is a prerequisite for KDE software.
• kdesrc-build is very customizable. You can control most options down to a module-by-module basis if you so desire, including configure-flags, CMake flags, and your C++ flags during compilation. Instead of trying to remember what configure line you used, you can set it once and forget it.
• Extensive documentation. Feel free to let me know if you need something explained (e-mail address at bottom), or contact the kde-devel mailing list.
• A detailed sample configuration file is included, usually you can just copy it to ~/.kdesrc-buildrc and be done with it.
• Much more!