Basic Kdesvn-build features

qt-copy support

Kdesvn-build strives to maintain excellent support for the qt-copy module included in the KDE Subversion repository.

Note

qt-copy is a copy of the source code for the latest release of the Qt™ toolkit used by KDE. It also contains a patchset of optimization and bug improvement patches which may optionally be applied. These patches are still compatible with the Qt™ library so that code produced using qt-copy will run with normal Qt™.

Most of the differences required for qt-copy are handled automatically by Kdesvn-build. However, there are a few differences you may need to know about.

Normally the value for configure-flags for a module is appended to the global setting for configure-flags. However, the configure-flags setting for qt-copy will replace the global setting since they are not equivalent command lines.
Kdesvn-build will automatically define some extra environment variables to build qt-copy that are not normally required for the rest of KDE.
qt-copy also has support for an optional patch set containing some bug fixes and optimizations that have not yet made it to the official Qt™. To enable these, set the apply-qt-patches option to true. After making this change you may have to run kdesvn-build --refresh-build qt-copy.

Standard flags added by Kdesvn-build

To save you time, Kdesvn-build adds some standard paths to your environment for you:

The path to the KDE and Qt™ libraries is added to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable automatically. This means that you do not need to edit libpath to include them.
The path to the KDE and Qt™ development support programs are added to the PATH variable automatically. This means that you do not need to edit binpath to include them.
The path to the KDE-provided pkg-config is added automatically to PKG_CONFIG_PATH. This means that you do not need to use set-env to add these.
The setting for kdedir is automatically propagated to the KDEDIR environment variable while building. (KDEDIRS is not affected).
The setting for qtdir is automatically propagated to the QTDIR environment variable while building.
Kdesvn-build will automatically adjust the environment as necessary to account for the setting of the use-unsermake option.

Changing Kdesvn-build's build priority

Programs can run with different priority levels on Operating Systems nowadays, including Linux® and BSD. This allows the system to allocate time for the different programs in accordance with how important they are.

Kdesvn-build will normally allocate itself a low priority so that the rest of the programs on your system are unaffected and can run normally. Using this technique, Kdesvn-build will use extra CPU when it is available.

Kdesvn-build will still maintain a high enough priority level so that it runs before routine batch processes and before CPU donation programs such as Seti@Home.

To alter Kdesvn-build so that it uses a higher, or lower priority level permanently, then you need to adjust the niceness setting in the configuration file. The niceness setting controls how “nice” Kdesvn-build is to other programs. In other words, having a higher niceness gives Kdesvn-build a lower priority. So to give Kdesvn-build a higher priority, reduce the niceness (and vice versa). The niceness can go from 0 (not nice at all, highest priority) to 20 (super nice, lowest priority).

You can also temporarily change the priority for Kdesvn-build by using the --nice command line option. The value to the option is used exactly the same as for niceness.

Note

It is possible for some programs run by the super user to have a negative nice value, with a correspondingly even higher priority for such programs. Setting a negative (or even 0) niceness for Kdesvn-build is not a great idea, as it will not help run time significantly, but will make your computer seem very sluggish should you still need to use it.

To run Kdesvn-build with a niceness of 15 (a lower priority than normal):

% kdesvn-build --nice=15

Or, you can edit the configuration file to make the change permanent:

    niceness 15

Installation as the superuser

You may wish to have Kdesvn-build run the installation with super user privileges. This may be for the unrecommended system-wide installation. This is also useful when using a recommended single user KDE build, however. This is because some modules (especially kdebase) install programs that will briefly need elevated permissions when run. They are not able to achieve these permission levels unless they are installed with the elevated permissions.

You could simply run Kdesvn-build as the super user directly, but this is not recommended, since the program has not been audited for that kind of use. Although it should be safe to run the program in this fashion, it is better to avoid running as the super user when possible.

To take care of this, Kdesvn-build provides the make-install-prefix option. You can use this option to specify a command to use to perform the installation as another user. The recommended way to use this command is with the Sudo program, which will run the install command as the super user.

For example, to install all modules using Sudo, you could do something like this:

global
  make-install-prefix sudo
  # Other options
end global

To use make-install-prefix for only a single module, this would work:

module kdemultimedia
  make-install-prefix sudo
end module

Showing the progress of a module build

This feature is always available, and is automatically enabled when possible. What this does is display an estimated build progress while building a module; that way you know about how much longer it will take to build a module.

In order to use this feature, the use-unsermake option must be enabled for the module. This option is normally enabled by default, but some modules do not support it and are automatically stopped from using Unsermake. So if you think you have enabled Unsermake and you still do not see a progress report when building the module, it may be possible that the module does not support Unsermake.