Getting Started

To get started, all you really need is a SVN checkout. After that, you can compile and run the latest-and-greatest (and probably buggy) versions of the KDE PIM applications. When you find a bug, you can fix it, create a patch, and send it to us! That's the way KDE PIM applications are continually improving. There is much more information available to begin with, though.

Here is a checklist of things to launch yourself into the world of KDE PIM development -- for lots of them, it is most important that you know they exist:

• Subscribe to the right mailing lists. Read them regularly.
• Browse the information about the development tools, to choose one. Most KDE PIM hackers use kate, vi, or emacs as editor and just compile in a konsole window, though.
• Take a brief look at the Qt documentation. It is excellent, and you should know about QWidgets and QObjects a little before continuing.
• Take a brief look at the KDE documentation. It is a bit overwhelming.
• Spend some time over at the KDE Quality Team website.
• Get the prerequisites for building KDE PIM HEAD. Note that you really want to follow HEAD to make a positive contribution to KDE PIM. If you work on or with the last released version, you're usually a month or four behind the times, and that makes a huge difference in KDE PIM. You can work with a stable system -- the latest released KDE libs and base -- and put (relatively) unstable PIM HEAD on it.
• Get a SVN checkout.
• Compile it and install.
• Report bugs, wishes, fix bugs, get involved!

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are probably the ultimate source of development information. Follow discussions of KDE core and application developers and ask your questions. Unless you don't think about what you are saying, you will surely get an answer. Subscribe to the kde-pim kde-pim@kde.org; it is for discussion about development. Please don't wildly post all your compilation problems there.

IRC (Chat)

Most of the developers hang around in one development IRC channel or another. On freenode (irc.kde.org), you can find:

• #kontact for development discussion on Kontact, KOrganizer, and KAddressBook. Please don't post user-questions there.
• KPilot no longer in use, #kpilot is maybe in use anyway.

There are a variety of IRC (Chat) programs available. KDE ships with Konversation and KSirc. XChat is available in many installations as well.

Common KDE Developer information

Visit the KDE Developer's Corner at http://developer.kde.org for very detailed information about KDE-development. You'll find lots of stuff, e.g. documentation, tutorials, reference guides, etc.

KDevelop is an Integrated Development Environment for KDE. Learn more about KDevelop at www.kdevelop.org.

For recent news about KDE development you may not miss the KDE news site at dot.kde.org

Prerequisites

KDE PIM takes backwards compatibility seriously. This means that you can compile KDE PIM HEAD as of today (may 27th 2005) against KDE 3.4.0, released march 16th, 2005. OK, so that's about 3 months of backwards compatibility. It's something, and it means that you can compile and run KDE PIM HEAD on a system that is otherwise stable. You can use your distro's packages for all of KDE but KDE PIM, which gives you a stable base to start with. Then compile KDE PIM HEAD, and you're set to help out with the bleeding edge.

You might want to make a backup of your valuable data, though. Most of it lives in .kde in your home directory; your mail folders don't, though. It may be simplest to just create an additional user and give it a copy of your data, and run PIM HEAD there.

Subversion - a Source Code Control System

The KDE SVN repository can also be visited via WWW at http://websvn.kde.org - the sources of the KDE-PIM-suite can be found in the subdirectory /trunk/KDE/kdepim,
the webpage is in /trunk/www/areas/pim for webdevelopers.

The really short guide

The one-step guide to getting KDE PIM HEAD checked out from (anonymous) SVN. This will let you build KDE PIM from source; there's an hour or two delay behind the main SVN server, so you won't get the latest and greatest, but it's close enough.

Get an initial checkout of KDE PIM with:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdepim

There! That's all there is to it. You can cd into the directory kdepim/ and start work. In future, when in that directory, enter the following command to stay up-to-date:

svn update

This command will print what it's doing and finish by telling you which revision is now current:

Updated to revision 418983.

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