Project Management Systems
Globally, a project will rely on some form of project management system. KDevelop offers four project management systems the programmer can select from when creating a new project.
Automake projects use the GNU standard development tools.
QMake projects use the trolltech QMake project manager.
ANT projects use the Apache ANT project manager for Java™ development.
Custom projects require you to maintain your own Makefiles.
Projects created with KDevelop's Automake Manager make it very easy for developers to use the GNU standard development tools. They provide
a better way of Makefile generation and
a good and safe way for fast adaption towards different systems by autoconf-generated configure scripts.
For developers who enjoy the flexibility and feel of Qt™'s qmake system, KDevelop offers the ability to handle qmake based projects (.pro files) within the GUI.
For more information on the QMake project manager see the “qmake User Guide” which should be included in your distribution or have a look at the TROLLTECH Documentation home page where you may find the QMake documentation of your “Qt C++ GUI Application Development Toolkit” version.
Java™ developers may want to use the Apache ANT project manager for their projects. To set up a new Ant project in KDevelop select ->->->->.
For more information see The Apache Ant Project home page.
If you prefer to maintain your own Makefiles for your project you may use the custom project option of KDevelop. This may be feasible in unusually structured projects or if you want to retain full control over the make process.
Yet, if you do not really need the extra flexibility and control of the custom project manager you should consider Automake Manager or one of the other project managers, because they considerably ease the program building and distribution processes.
The distribution of your applications does not require the end-user to have anything different installed other than
an appropriate compiler,
a linker, and
the appropriate development libraries,
which at least for C++ applications is most often the case. But you can as well distribute binary packages of your application. In either way, the end-user of your product does not need KDevelop installed.
For giving away your sources, we advise to include the project file of KDevelop as well. This makes it very easy for other developers—if they use KDevelop—to work with your sources.
For projects where several developers, maybe working on different places, are involved, this should be the case anyway. So you can ensure consistency of the Makefiles to not run into trouble.
Especially on multi language applications, translators won't actually work with the source code, except in cases that require correction for enabling translation support.
