Getting started

[Duncan]

Cruceru Calin posted on Wed, 18 Dec 2013 00:20:43 +0200 as excerpted:

> I heard from a friend about KDE and since I have knowledge about C++,
> which is the main used programming language ( from what i heard and read
> ), I decided to get involved and find out more about KDE.
> 
> I have already read almost everything from the Getinginvolved website
> but as it is mentioned at some point, getting started may be pretty
> hard, so I need assistance.
> 
> Firstly, I need to know more about what software I need in order to
> start repairing bugs and working in a KDE environment and then, how
> exactly I do this. I found the list with the junior-jobs but I cannot
> find any source code there, so I'm a little bit confused.

I'm not a developer myself, so I had waited for someone else more 
qualified to respond.  But I don't see a response yet (maybe people are 
on Christmas vacation already?), so I'll try to answer what I can.  And 
FWIW, as a longtime gentoo user I'm accustomed to compiling from sources, 
and I do run live-git of various things including kde (tho current branch 
not trunk/master) and the linux kernel and routinely apply patches, even 
creating them at times if things aren't too complex, and I'm involved 
both on the more user oriented kde lists and with upstream on a different 
project (pan, a gtk-based nntp client, where I'm a regular on the lists 
and serve as a kind of go-between between the devs and other users) as 
well, so while not a dev, I am a reasonably development-literate user...

Software needed?

Obviously gcc and the like for compiling things, plus cmake since that's 
what runs kde's make scripts, and qt4, as a major kde dependency.[1]  
Most of kde now uses git repos for distributed version control, tho there 
are a few bits (mainly artwork and the like, as git works best with 
source files not binaries) still using subversion, so you'll definitely 
need git and possibly subversion, for version control.  Both kde and qt 
have development tools (the kdevelop and qdevelop development 
environments) that can help as well, but AFAIK they're not mandatory.

While you mention the getting involved site, you don't specifically 
mention techbase, and since you specifically asked about sources and 
there are links to those and build instructions on the techbase site, I 
guess you've probably not found it yet.  So...

http://techbase.kde.org

There's really more there than will fit into a post here, so I'll let you 
read that first.  After that, you could post any specific questions, tho 
I suspect they may quickly get beyond my level and thus my ability to 
help.

Also potentially of interest:

http://projects.kde.org

It's also worth mentioning that while kde in general targets the *ix 
family (Linux and the BSDs), and while I personally won't install 
servantware (in the context of my sig) and thus am not particularly 
interested in it, there's also a kde-on-mswindows project, with its own 
informational pages:

http://windows.kde.org

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Windows

Hopefully that at least provides a reasonable starting point.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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