The K Desktop Environment

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17. Contributing

17.1 How can I contribute to KDE?

KDE is a free software project that lives from voluntary contributions. Everybody is encouraged to contribute to KDE. Not only programmers are welcome. There are lots of ways in which you can help to continue KDE:

There are several places to look for more information if you want to get involved in the development. The first step is to subscribe to some of the mailing lists. You will soon see something that can be improved or added.

17.2 How do I commit a bug report?

There is an automatic bug tracking system available at:

http://buglist.kde.org

The system features an entry form to commit new bug descriptions and a list of all known bugs. Please make sure to look through the buglist before committing a new bug.

17.3 I want to program for KDE. What should I do first?

Everybody is encouraged to develop software for KDE. What you should do first depends strongly on your experience, e.g. whether you have already learned C++ or have experience with the Qt toolkit and so on.

To get into KDE programming, you will need some basic tools: automake, autoconf and egcs. You should look at http://developer.kde.org/ and http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~ssk/kde/devel/ for more tips.

Another excellent resource for learning KDE programming is the QT online tutorials. These are installed along with QT. Open up in KDE Help or KFM: $QTDIR/html/index.html and bookmark it. The tutorial is under "Using QT". The source code for each lesson can be found in the $QTDIR/tutorial directory.

There is, however, one thing that everybody interested in programming for KDE should do: subscribe to the developers mailing list. To subscribe, you have to send a mail with your email address in the subject to:

kde-devel-request@kde.org

Please read How to subscribe to these lists carefully. Everything said there applies to the development list as well.

17.4 How do I get write access to the development list?

By default, when you have subscribed to the development list, you will not be able to post on this list, you can just receive the messages. If you want to post on this list, you have to contact Martin Konold first. He will add you to the list of people allowed to write on kde-devel.

This is not a kind of censorship: Everybody interested in developing will get write access to the list. We think that this procedure is a good way to keep the signal to noise ratio high on this list.

17.5 How do I get access to the CVS?

The KDE project uses the CVS system to develop the core parts of the software. Usually, if you have changed one of this parts, perhaps fixed a bug, and you want to commit this change, the best way is to create a patch against a current snapshot and send this patch to the developer/maintainer of the respective program.

If you are doing this more or less regularly, you can ask Stephan Kulow for direct access to the CVS. But be aware that more and more users will slow down the CVS access for all developers, so we want to keep the number of people with direct CVS access reasonably small. But feel free to ask!

17.6 I am just curious. Can I have read-only access to the CVS?

Yes. It is possible to get read-only access to the CVS repository with the cvsup utility.

You can find more information about how to set up cvsup for the KDE repository at the KDE cvsup page.

17.7 Are there any CVS mirror sites for KDE?

Yes. The main KDE server is normally very busy and unresponsive. One is at cvsup.nl.freebsd.org. Replace

 
*default host=cvs.kde.org
with
 
*default host=cvsup.nl.freebsd.org
in your cvsup script.

17.8 How do I go about translating KDE programs into my native language?

Take a look at http://www.kde.org/i18n.html to see whether your program is already translated (most are). Otherwise you'll find information there on how to do it yourself.

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