The lazy developer's shortcut to KF5 on Windows (VS 2013)

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi!

A few days ago I linked to a one-stop, pre-compiled,
all-sources-and-emerge-included snapshot of the KF5 libraries for
Windows. That version was based on MinGW, now the same (roughly) is
available for MSVC (2013).

Obviously, this time, no compiler is included, but that should be the
only thing you will have to install separately, you should find
everything else already in place. This time, the archive includes the
packages' "image" directory (useful if you want to create installer
packages), and also QtWebEngine.

Find this version at
  http://files.kde.org/rkward/testing/Windows_Environment/MSVC/

Again, don't let this discourage you from building your own emerge tree
from scratch, and doing so still has several advantages. But if you've
been shying away from KF5 on Windows, because the initial setup seemed
too cumbersome, this may just be the shortcut you've been looking for.

README.txt pasted below.

Regards
Thomas


--- What's this? ---
The folder "k" contains the root directory of my build of KDE
Frameworks 5 on Windows using emerge
(http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/Windows/emerge), built
with MS Visual Studio 2013. Packed using 7zip
(http://http://www.7-zip.org/). Size of the extracted archive is around
10.3 GB.

Installations of python (3.5 and 2.7) are also included, for a fully
functional emerge tool. The only thing you will have to install is
Microsoft Visual Studio (I used 2013 Express). Then, un7zip to drive
K:\ (see "Config and paths", below), enter K:\ cd K:\k\emerge
  kdeenv.bat
in a command line, and you should be all set up. kate and kwrite can be
run directly from Explorer, without setting any paths.

--- Intended audience ---
The intended audience includes:
- Developers wishing to work with the KDE platform on Windows
- Users who have been told to try this archive, explicitly, and by a
trusted person (e.g. to check if a bug is still present)
- Users who are really curious *and* aware that curiousity killed the
cat. If you do not belong to any of these categories, then this archive
is not for you.

--- Why shouldn't I just build my own tree using emerge? ---
If you want to do that, by all means, do! That's still the canonical
way to get a build environment of KDE on Windows. And the more people
are going this way, the sooner any problems on the path will be
recognized and fixed.

This archive is targetted at those who would like a shortcut. I know I
would have liked to have one, for various reasons. I share it in the
hope that more developers will start looking at KDE on Windows at all,
when getting started is really easy. This in turn, should help most in
improving our support for the Windows platform.

--- Compiler and platform ---
I compiled for i386 (32bit) and using MS Visual Studio 2013. If you
plan on using a different compiler, or compiling for a different
architecture, then this archive will not be of any use to you. I
compiled on a Windows 8.1 (virtual) box. You should be fine with any
desktop version of Windows starting at Windows 8.1 or later. That is
not optimal, I know, but currently I lack a suitable Windows 7 license.
Windows XP is no longer supported in emerge.

--- What's included? ---
All KF5 frameworks, their dependencies and kate kate / kwrite. This is
a snapshot from git around Mid-Freburary 2016. Thus, KF5 version should
be roughly 5.19.0. Qt is at 5.5.1.

You should find all sources included. In theory, you should be able to
rebuild everything, without the need to download any additions (using
the "--offline" option of emerge). I have not tried this, though. If
you find anything missing, please drop me a note. Do heed all copyright
notices!

--- What's not included and caveats ---
- The compiler (MSVC 2013) is not included.
- QtWebkit and QtWebEngine are both included, but untested (and
QtWebkit seemed to have problems in the MinGW build).

--- Config and paths ---
My KDE was rooted at K:\k . The runtime should work fine, even if you
extract the archive to a different path. However, absolute path
references are all over the build system. So if you want to compile
anything, you probably have to make sure to use the same root path I
did. Hint: Try using subst K:
C:\Where\you\actually\extracted\this\archive You may also have to make
some adjustments in K:\k\etc\kdesettings.ini. Note that all git and svn
checkouts are anonymous and thus read-only.

--- More technical details ---
I had to apply some small patches at several places. If this gets into
conflict with (the same or different) patches included upstream, "git
checkout -- ." is your friend.

Thomas Friedrichsmeier, 2016-02-26
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