Other kde-builder features

5.5. Other kde-builder features#

5.5.1. Changing the amount of output from kde-builder#

kde-builder has several loggers, which you can configure to control the amount of output they generate.

Loggers' default severity levels and formatters are defined in the data/kde-builder-logging.yaml.

To override specific loggers values, copy data/kde-builder-logging.yaml config to the ~/.config/kde-builder-logging.yaml or to the current working directory. Alternatively, instead of copying file, you can just create a yaml file with only overridden values in the mentioned locations.

For example, to change application logger to DEBUG level, the file will look like this:

loggers:
  application:
    level: DEBUG

The order of loggers configs are read is the following:

  1. kde-builder applies the default configuration from data/kde-builder-logging.yaml (located in the kde-builder root directory).

  2. If the ./kde-builder-logging.yaml file is found (from the current working directory), it overrides the default configuration.

  3. If the file was not found in previous step, then if the ~/.config/kde-builder-logging.yaml file is found, it overrides the default configuration.

Note

To temporary set all loggers to DEBUG level, use --debug command line option.

This is a table of loggers severity levels. The lower level you choose, the more info will be printed.

Python logger levels

CRITICAL (50)

ERROR (40)

WARNING (30)

INFO (20)

DEBUG (10)

NOTSET (0)

5.5.2. Color output#

When being run from Konsole or a different terminal, kde-builder will normally display with colorized text.

You can disable this by using the --no-color on the command line, or by setting the colorful-output option in the configuration file to false.

Disabling color output in the configuration file:

global:
  colorful-output: false

5.5.3. Removing unneeded directories after a build#

Are you short on disk space but still want to run a bleeding-edge KDE checkout? kde-builder can help reduce your disk usage when building KDE from git.

Note

Be aware that building KDE does take a lot of space. There are several major space-using pieces when using kde-builder:

  1. The actual source checkout can take up a fair amount of space. The default projects take up about 1.6 gigabytes of on-disk space. You can reduce this amount by making sure that you are only building as many projects as you actually want. kde-builder will not delete source code from disk even if you delete the entry from the configuration file, so make sure that you go and delete unused source checkouts from the source directory. Note that the source files are downloaded from the Internet, you should not delete them if you are actually using them, at least until you are done using kde-builder.

    Also, if you already have a Qt installed by your distribution (and the odds are good that you do), you probably do not need to install the qt6-set group. That will shave about 200 megabytes off of the on-disk source size.

Note

Todo: Outdated info. Mentions the size for the kdebase module. And check the statements about "fake build dir".

  1. kde-builder will create a separate build directory to build the source code in. Sometimes kde-builder will have to copy a source directory to create a fake build directory. When this happens, space-saving symlinks are used, so this should not be a hassle on disk space. The build directory will typically be much larger than the source directory for a project. For example, the build directory for kdebase is about 1050 megabytes, whereas kdebase's source is only around 550 megabytes.

    Luckily, the build directory is not required after a project has successfully been built and installed. kde-builder can automatically remove the build directory after installing a project, see the examples below for more information. Note that taking this step will make it impossible for kde-builder to perform the time-saving incremental builds.

  2. Finally, there is disk space required for the actual installation of KDE, which does not run from the build directory. This typically takes less space than the build directory. It is harder to get exact figures however.

How do you reduce the space requirements of KDE? One way is to use the proper compiler flags, to optimize for space reduction instead of for speed. Another way, which can have a large effect, is to remove debugging information from your KDE build.

Warning

You should be very sure you know what you are doing before deciding to remove debugging information. Running bleeding-edge software means you are running software which is potentially much more likely to crash than a stable release. If you are running software without debugging information, it can be very hard to create a good bug report to get your bug resolved, and you will likely have to re-enable debugging information for the affected application and rebuild to help a developer fix the crash. So, remove debugging information at your own risk!

Removing the build directory after installation of a module. The source directory is still kept, and debugging is enabled:

global:
  configure-flags: --enable-debug
  remove-after-install: builddir # Remove build directory after install

Removing the build directory after installation, without debugging information, with size optimization.

global:
  cxxflags: -Os # Optimize for size
  configure-flags: --disable-debug
  remove-after-install: builddir # Remove build directory after install