Calligra/Building Calligra on Windows

« Back to general building instructions

Note

These instructions are a work in progress, being based on the Linux Build instructions, there are some sections which need updating.

These instructions are for the Windows operating systems.

See also:

• Building Krita on Windows, the easy way BuildKritaOnWindows
• Nightly Builds
• Developing With...
• Pages about compiling KDE software for Windows
• kde's git infrastructure manual
• KDE and Git for developers
• git crash course

Preparation

Automated Approach

First you should have windows 7 or later installed. If you're a unix user and tired of install windows manually, here is a sample packer template for auto-unattend installation of Windows 7 SP1 x64 in virtualbox:

git clone https://github.com/philacs/calligra-windows-dev-env-setup.git
cd calligra-windows-dev-env-setup

replace ProductKey and Windows 7 PROFESSIONAL in scripts/Autounattend.xml to use your ProductKey and Edition, replace "iso_url" in win7x64.json to the location of your windows 7 iso file. kde folder will be copied to C:/kde so put anything you want to copy there. Install packer following this link, make sure your computer connected to the Internet so it can download needed softwares, then

packer build win7x64.json

Virtualbox Appliance files will be generated under output-virtualbox-iso folder, import the ovf file in virtualbox to use it.

If you don't use the packer.io builder provided, still download the git repo and copy kderoot folder as C:/kderoot manually to continue next step.

Now download and install kde windows build dependencies. RunC:/kderoot/install-kde-build-deps.bat, an application will be downloaded through IE and click "Run" in the upcoming dialog, then the install starts. The installation is automated including reboot handling, wait until everything finish.

[TODO] Download pre-built calligra dependencies by running C:/kderoot/install-calligra-build-deps.bat.

Manual Approach

Setup Directories

Here is standard directory structure for building KDE applications:

C:\kderoot

KDE on Windows root directory

From your %USERPROFILE% directory (assuming you are the only local user)

kde4\src\

source code

kde4\build\calligra

directory that Calligra will be built in

kde4\inst\

directory that Calligra will be installed in

You can create this structure by opening a command prompt (cmd.exe) and typing:

cd %USERPROFILE% 
mkdir kde4
mkdir kde4\build
mkdir kde4\build\calligra
mkdir kde4\inst
mkdir kde4\src

Install Dependencies

Before you begin, you will need to have a minimal set of software installed on your PC:

• Python 3.4 (x86, not 64-bit)
• Git
• Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 with Service Pack 1 (Instructions are here.)

This assumes you want to use MSVC2010. These two posts [[1]] and [[2]] are about using kde-4.12 with MSVC2013.

Configure Emerge

"emerge" is a Python-based set of scripts which download and build a lot of software KDE depends on. When it works properly emerge very convenient to use, however it must be configured with care. You can learn more about emerge here.

Begin by downloading the emerge repository.

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/emerge.git
cd emerge
git checkout kde-4.13
mkdir ..\etc
copy kdesettings-example.bat ..\etc\kdesettings.bat

(Note: the instructions below use the kde-4.13 branch. However the author never had success with kde-4.13 and MSVC2013, so perhaps kde-4.12 would be the better choice.)

Next you must tell emerge about your build environment. To do this you will need to make the following changes to etc/kdesettings.bat:

• Update KDEROOT
• Set KDECOMPILER=msvc2010 (or msvc2012 or msvc2013)
• Set EMERGE_USE_SHORT_PATH=True
• Set EMERGE_PYTHON_PATH to your Python installation(default assumes in Program Files)
• Update WINDOWSSDKDIR to point to your installation of the Windows SDK
• Set EMERGE_SOURCEONLY=True

When using MS Visual Studio 2010, make sure you have SP1. MS VS 2012 and 2013 may have problems compiling Qt 4.8.5 (see [3] and [4] for details).

One you have done this, you should navigate to the emerge directory and call

kdeenv

This sets up the development environment that you will need to use in order to build the KDE libraries, their dependencies and Calligra.

Emerge KDE libraries

In order to install the bare minimum set up of KDE libraries, you will need to run a series of calls to emerge, which will take some time:

emerge qt
emerge kdelibs
emerge kde-runtime
emerge boost (required for required for the core libraries, stage, sheets and krita)

Users familiar with development on Linux platforms may also wish to install another couple of libraries

emerge coreutils
emerge grep

There are some additional optional libraries that can be used by Calligra, again emerge is used to install them:

emerge lcms2
emerge eigen2
emerge okular (only needed to build a calligra plugin for okular)
emerge exiv2
emerge soprano
emerge librdf-src

Wordperfect document and graphics support is contained in two additional libraries:

emerge libwpd
emerge libwpg

Getting the source code

As Windows support is still being improved, it is recommended that you use the development version. If you require stability, it is recommended that you take advantage of the nightly builds.

The latest development version of Calligra is 3.1.0 Alpha; developers always refer to it as to Master. Once tested and released, it will become the new current stable version 3.1.

To retrieve the source code from Git you have to use the following setup:

Add the following text to %USERPROFILE%\.gitconfig:

[url "git://anongit.kde.org/"]
    insteadOf = kde:
[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
    pushInsteadOf = kde:
[core]
    autocrlf=false

Then execute

git clone kde:calligra

By using the kde: prefix, read access will automatically happen over Git, and authenticated SSH is only required for pushes.

Note that pushing your changes will only work if you have a KDE developer identity (https://identity.kde.org/register.php).

This will create a 'calligra' subdirectory with the complete source tree.

Build Calligra

From your home directory, navigate to the build\calliga subdirectory and execute cmake to configure the project for building with the following lines:

cd kde4\build\calligra
# with versions <= 2.6
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=..\..\inst ..\..\src\calligra -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=%EMERGE_BUILDTYPE% -G "NMake Makefiles JOM" -DTINY=off -DBUILD_active=off -DBUILD_mobile=off -DBUILD_kexi=off
# with versions >= 2.7
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=..\..\inst ..\..\src\calligra -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=%EMERGE_BUILDTYPE% -G "NMake Makefiles JOM" -DBUILD_kexi=off

Here we are telling cmake that:

• We want to install Calligra into ~/kde4/inst
• The source files are located at ~/kde4/src/calligra
• We are building to the same type (RelWithDebInfo / Debug) as used to build the Qt and KDE libraries, by reading the value of EMERGE_BUILDTYPE
• We are selectively disabling some portions of the build with the -DBUILD_xxxx=on|off commands. 'active' and 'mobile' are not applicable to the desktop build, while flow and kexi (at the time of writing) were still undergoing testing on the platform.

Note

You can selectively build applications by using the -DBUILD_application=off command to disable building of those you do not want. If you have a full cmake install, you can use the cmake-gui application to let you make changes to the configuration.

Then, to build Calligra, type:

jom -j 20

Note

jom is a multi-core port of nmake. You can specify the number of course use with the -j# parameter. e.g. jom -j8 would instruct it to use 8 processes. Setting a large number will instruct it to use all the cores on your machine.

This will take a while. Once it has completed, type this command to install the software:

jom install

Please follow the Running Calligra Applications instructions before trying to run an application.

Running Calligra applications

There are two options to make the Calligra applications available for running.

• Option 1: Being able to run Calligra applications from the command line. If you have installed Calligra in a different prefix than KDElibs (which was recommended in this document), you may want to set the following environment variable:

set KDEDIRS=\path\to\install;%KDEDIRS%
set PATH=\path\to\install\bin;%PATH%
set KDEHOME=\path\to\a\config\dir

And then you need to execute:

kbuildsycoca4

For example for the recommended directory structure:

set KDEDIRS=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\inst;%KDEDIRS%
set PATH=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\inst\bin;%PATH%
set KDEHOME=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\.kde

Here we are setting KDEHOME to be saved.

If you are using Windows Powershell, the commands are:

$KDEDIRS = $KDEDIRS + ";\path\to\install"
$Path = $Path + ";\path\to\install\bin"
$KDEHOME = $KDEHOME + "\path\to\a\config\dir"

• Option 2: Being able to run Calligra applications from the menu or by clicking on desktop icons. Instead of using KDEDIRS, you can add these lines to $HOME/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals file using text editor:

[Directories]
prefixes=%USERPROFILE%\kde4\inst

And then you need to execute:

update-mime-database %KDEROOT%\share\mime
kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental

The advantage of this is that KDE4 will always look for the services where Calligra is installed.

Updating the already built software

If the source code has been checked out, it is possible to update the source code with newly added changes and build again. Usually only changing parts will be built, so this operation would be faster than building the source code from scratch.

Type:

cd %USERPROFILE%\kde4\src\calligra
git pull --rebase
cd %USERPROFILE%\kde4\build\calligra
jom
jom install

Executing unit tests

To be able to execute unit tests, you need to explicitely enable them in the build configuration. To do so, set the KDE4_BUILD_TESTS variable to "ON", either by issuing the command in the build directory:

cd %USERPROFILE%/kde4/build/calligra
cmake -DKDE4_BUILD_TESTS=ON .

Or you can run cmake-gui in the buld directory and set KDE4_BUILD_TESTS to "on".

It is then recommended that before running the tests, you first execute

jom install

You can then run the test by executing:

jom test

or individually in the tests directories.

CMake Build Options

When you enter your build directory, you can type "cmake-gui ." to see many build options, e.g. you can turn off compilation of apps you don't want - you can save time when compiling.

Here is list for Krita related options:

• HAVE_MEMORY_LEAK_TRACKER [On/Off] - You can turn on compilation of the tool in krita which detects memory leak. If you want to help debug Krita memory usage, it is useful. Otherwise you just slow down your Krita.
• HAVE_BACKTRACE_SUPPORT [On/Off] - It is related to the memory leak tool. If you activate, you will be able to see code path which leads to memory leak.

Resources

• Useful hints for who wants to hack on Calligra
• opengtl debugging, or turning it off
• Status of Calligra build on Windows (msvc 2008, mingw)

Possible issues

Calligra apps don't start

If the Calligra applications do not start properly, or you see the window flash up then disappear, then you need to check the Running Calligra Applications section earlier and make sure you've run update-mime-database and kbuildsycoca4.

You can get some additional insight by installing DebugView, which will let you see warnings and error messages reported by the programs. This is available on Microsoft Technet.

The sources for the WIX-based installer for Calligra on Windows are at https://gitorious.org/calligra-installer-for-windows