6.3. KDE projects and source code organization

6.3.1. The Project

KDE groups its software into "modules" of various size. This was initially a loose grouping of a few large projects, but with the introduction of the git-based source code repositories, these large projects were further split into many smaller projects.

kde-builder uses this project concept as well. In essence, a "project" is a grouping of code that can be downloaded, built, tested, and installed.

6.3.1.1. Individual projects

It is easy to set kde-builder to build a single project. The following listing is an example of what a declaration for a project would look like in the configuration file.

project kdefoo:
  cmake-options: -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

Tip

This is a git-based project since it doesn't use a repository option. Also, the cmake-options option is listed as an example only, it is not required.

6.3.1.2. Groups of related projects

Now most KDE source projects are git-based KDE, and are normally combined into groups of projects.

kde-builder therefore supports groups of projects as well, using groups. An example:

group base-projects:
  repository: kde-projects
  use-projects:
    - kde-runtime
    - kde-workspace
    - kde-baseapps

Tip

This repository setting tells kde-builder where to download the source from, but you can also use a git:// URL.

One special feature of the "repository: kde-projects" is that kde-builder will automatically include any projects that are grouped under the projects you list (in the KDE Project database).

6.3.1.3. Project "branch groups"

Taking the concept of a group of projects further, the KDE developers eventually found that synchronizing the names of the git branches across a large number of repositories was getting difficult, especially during the development push for the new KDE Frameworks for Qt 5.

So the concept of "branch groups" was developed, to allow users and developers to select one of only a few groups, and allow the kde-builder to automatically select the appropriate git branch.

branch-group can be used in the configuration file as follows:

Example of using branch-group

global:
  # Select KDE Frameworks 6 and other Qt6-based apps
  branch-group: kf6-qt6

  # Other global options here ...

group name:
  # branch-group only works for kde-projects
  repository: kde-projects

  # branch-group is inherited from the one set globally, but could
  # be specified here.

  use-projects:
    - kdelibs
    - kde-workspace

# kdelibs's branch will be "frameworks"
# kde-workspace's branch will be "master" (as of August 2013)

In this case the same branch-group gives different branch names for each module.

This feature requires some data maintained by the KDE developers in a git repository named repo-metadata, however this project will be included automatically by kde-builder (though you may see it appear in the script output).

Tip

KDE projects that do not have a set branch name for the branch group you choose will default to an appropriate branch name, as if you had not specified branch-group at all.