API is the short form of “Application Program Interface”. Actually such an API cotains a series of descriptions (i.e. calling conventions) by which an application program can access the operating system and other services. In our context, however, a broader definition was adopted. The API of a KDE or Qt™ application is an abstract of the classes and methods interfaces, a synopsis to be used like a dictionary to navigate the sources.

There is a version of the most current API available at the KDevelop-Home website. It will be automatically updated every 24 hours so you can keep up.

Alas, this version is best used read-only over the internet. If you do not always have internet access you may as well build your own API documentation from the KDevelop sources. To do so, you must tell the automake system where to find the KDELIBS API in your system. This is accomplished by the special option --with-kdelibsdoxy-dir in the configure command when you prepare to compile the KDevelop sources:

(make will replace the global $KDEDIR variable with the actual KDE directory setting recorded therein.) Then issue a make command as usual. After the KDevelop IDE has been built you have the option to build the API as well. For this you must issue

This will build a Doxyfile in your KDevelop base directory which in turn will be processed by the Doxygen application to build quite a lot of .html API files. When this rather lengthy API building process (may last more than an hour on a slow system) finally comes to an end, you must install the API just like you have to install the KDevelop IDE itself. If necessary obtain superuser rights by

and entering the root password. Then install the API files:

Once this is done, make will inform you about the directory where you can finally look at the API documentation's contents. Note this address, you can use it from Konqueror as well as from inside KDevelop, in case you have set up the KDevelop sources themselves as a project to work on.