The lazy developer's shortcut to KF5 on Windows

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi!

Looking to bring your KF5 application / library to Windows, but scared
of going through a complex and lengthy setup procedure on an alien OS?
Here's a shortcut:
  http://files.kde.org/rkward/testing/Windows_Environment/ 
Download, unpack, run "kdeenv.bat", and you should find your Windows
development environment all set up and ready, including all KF5
frameworks, and your favorite texteditor kate / kwrite already
installed.

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). Packed
using 7zip (http://http://www.7-zip.org/). Size of the extracted
archive is around 7.2 GB.

Installations of python (3.5 and 2.7) are also included, for a fully
functional emerge tool. 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. Tools such as
git, gcc, etc. are available from the command line after running
kdeenv.bat.

--- 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 MinGW. 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 Vista / 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 ---
- QtWebEngine is not included, as that refuses to compile with MinGW.
(Which is downright shameful, if you ask me!)
- QtWebKit is included, but the only app I tried using it crashes while
using it. Not sure, whether the problem is in the app (rkward) or in
QtWebKit.
- I removed the entire build directory, as this would have made the
package huge. If you want to rebuild something, you will have to
rebuild that from scratch. But importantly, you will _not_ have to
build all dependencies, first.

--- 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. Hint for changing that: git
remote set-url origin [pushable url]

--- More technical details ---
I had to apply some small patches to khtmlpart, locally. If this gets
into conflict with patches included upstream, "git reset --hard" is
your friend.

Finally, I copied the MinGW runtime libs from k\mingw\bin\ to k\bin, in
order to make KDE applications start without having to set the path,
first. Hope that doesn't cause any probs, elsewhere.

Thomas Friedrichsmeier, 2016-02-23
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