Features Overview

1.2. Features Overview#

KDE Builder features include:

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

    For an even more verbose description of what KDE Builder is doing, try using the --debug option.

  • Excellent support for building the Qt library (in case the KDE software you are trying to build depends on a recent Qt not available in your distribution).

  • KDE Builder does not require a GUI present to operate. So, you can build KDE software without needing a graphical environment.

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

    Also, KDE Builder will add standard flags as appropriate to save you the trouble and possible errors from typing them yourself.

  • KDE Builder can checkout a specific branch or tag of a module. You can also ensure that a specific revision is checked out of a project.

  • KDE Builder can checkout only portions of a project, for those situations where you only need one program from a large project.

  • For developers: KDE Builder will remind you if you use git+ssh:// but ssh-agent is not running, as this will lead to repeated password requests from SSH.

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

  • The locations for the directories used by KDE Builder are configurable (even per project).

  • Can use sudo, or a different user-specified command to install projects so that KDE Builder does not need to be run as the super user.

  • KDE Builder runs with reduced priority by default to allow you to still use your computer while it is working.

  • There is support for resuming a build from a given project. You can even ignore some projects temporarily for a given build.

  • KDE Builder 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.

  • Comes built-in with a sane set of default options appropriate for building a base KDE single-user installation from the source code.

  • Forced full rebuilds, by running kde-builder with the --refresh-build option.

  • You can specify various environment values to be used during the build, including 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.