This tool streamlines the process of setting up and maintaining a development environment for KDE software.

It does this by automating the process of downloading source code from the KDE source code repositories, building that source code, and installing it to your local system.

kde-builder downloads and used data from special repository repo-metadata.
It contains KDE Projects database, names of branches to checkout for each project, build configs (default cmake options) for projects, and some other data.

kde-builder is a successor of a previously used tool called kdesrc-build.
The predecessor project was written in Perl, and this was a significant barrier for new contributions.
The successor project is written in Python - a much more acknowledged language. This means that newly wanted features can be implemented with ease.

Before installing, configure your PATH environment variable to include the ~/.local/bin path - the location where kde-builder will be installed. See documentation page for more information.

Installation:

cd ~
curl 'https://invent.kde.org/sdk/kde-builder/-/raw/master/scripts/initial_setup.sh?ref_type=heads' > initial_setup.sh
bash initial_setup.sh

Initial setup:

kde-builder --generate-config
kde-builder --install-distro-packages

Observe the build plan:

kde-builder --pretend kcalc

Build a project and its dependencies:

kde-builder kcalc

Rebuild only a single project without updating the source code:

kde-builder --no-include-dependencies --no-src kcalc

Launch the binary for a project using the development environment:

kde-builder --run kcalc

Build a specific project while skipping certain projects:

kde-builder kcalc --ignore-projects kxmlgui

For more details, consult the project documentation at https://kde-builder.kde.org/.

Shortcuts to some pages:

• Installation and initial setup steps
• List of supported configuration options
• Supported command line parameters