How to build Ark on Linux

Step 0 - Install build dependencies

Some distributions allow to install the build-time dependencies of any package with a single command. For example, on Debian or Ubuntu you can just run the following command:

sudo apt-get build-dep ark

If you are running the Plasma desktop, you should have most of these dependencies already installed. Usually one needs to manually install only the extra-cmake-modules.

Step 1 - Build ark

Like most KDE projects, Ark relies on the CMake build-system. This means that compiling Ark is as simple as running the following commands:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

Everything should work fine, provided that you installed all the required build dependencies.

Step 2 - Install ark

Once you built Ark, it's time to install it with the make install command. However, by default CMake will use /usr/local as install prefix, so you will have to run sudo make install.

At this point your should be able to run /usr/local/bin/ark. If Ark fails to start with the Unable to find Ark's KPart component, please check your installation. error, you need to run cmake with the additional -DKDE_INSTALL_USE_QT_SYS_PATHS=ON argument:

cmake -DKDE_INSTALL_USE_QT_SYS_PATHS=ON ..

Install to custom location

When running cmake, you can set the install prefix to whatever directory you want to install Ark in. For example

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/foo/whatever -DKDE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib ..

This way you can run make install without having to type to sudo password. However, you will need to set a bunch of environment variables, in order to have everything working:

# Install prefix, choose any folder you want
export KF5=~/home/foo/whatever

export XDG_DATA_DIRS=$KF5/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=$KF5/etc/xdg:/etc/xdg
export PATH=$KF5/bin:$PATH
export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$KF5/lib/plugins:$QT_PLUGIN_PATH

Step 3 - Run tests

TODO Write a tutorial for an ark-friendly kdesrc-build configuration. Reference: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Build_from_source

How to contribute to Ark

Development of Ark is tracked on phabricator. This includes code reviews and tasks.

Sending patches

Follow the instructions in the HACKING file: https://phabricator.kde.org/diffusion/ARK/browse/master/HACKING

Coding tasks

You can find a list of currently open tasks in the Ark workboard: https://phabricator.kde.org/tag/ark/