Windows/Compiling Applications

Compiling (third-party) applications for KDE on Windows

This page gives instructions on how to build a KDE based application on Windows. It is mostly targeted at developers / power users of KDE applications which are not regularly included in the KDE on Windows installer. This typically applies to third-party applications, but may be of interest to developers of applications inside the KDE software collection / repository as well.

Note however that in many cases using emerge may be a better alternative, esp. if you want to compile your application against the most recent development version of KDE.

Requirements

• Naturally, you need an installation of KDE. You the KDE on Windows installer to install it.
  • On the third page of the installer, select "Package Manager mode", and be sure to pick the compiler that you intend to use. For simplicity, we will assume you use "MinGW4" (32bit).
  • Be sure to install at least the following packages:
    • cmake (Bin)
    • automoc (Bin)
    • kdebase-runtime-mingw4 (Bin)
    • kdebase-workspace-mingw4 (Bin)
    • kdelibs-mingw4 (Bin, Devel)
    • qt-mingw4 (Bin, Devel)
    • phonon-mingw4 (Bin, Devel)
    • soprano-mingw4 (Bin, Devel)
    • Many more needed dependencies will be included automatically
    • Depending on the application you may need to select additional packages, such as e.g. kdepimlibs (Bin, Devel)
  • NOTE Package "automoc" is not included in the 4.4.4-release, at the time of this writing. You can download the 4.3.2-version, and unpack this to you KDE installation root.
• Install MinGW4. These days MinGW has a relatively simple installer. See [1] for further info. Be sure to install at least the C++ compiler.
• You need perl. E.g. from [2] . TODO: check whether perl is available from the installer.