kdesrc-build will run through the update and build process, but instead of performing any actions to update or build, will instead output what the script would have done (e.g. what commands to run, general steps being taken, etc.).

This option causes kdesrc-build to automatically include other KDE and Qt™ modules in the build, if required for the modules you have requested to build on the command line or in your configuration file.

The modules that are added are as recorded within the KDE source code management system. See the section called “The official KDE module database”.

The corresponding configuration file option is include-dependencies.

This option is enabled by default.

Do not include the modules passed on the rest of the command line in the update/build process (this is useful if you want to build most of the modules in your configuration file and just skip a few).

Note that this option does not override ignore-modules config option in global section. Instead, it appends it.

This option interprets the next item on the command line as a program to run, and kdesrc-build will then finish reading the configuration file, source the prefix.sh to apply environment variables, and then execute the given program.

This option causes kdesrc-build to checkout a specific numbered revision for each Git module, overriding any branch, tag, or revision options already set for these modules.

This option is likely not a good idea, and is only supported for compatibility with older scripts.

This option is used to let kdesrc-build delete source directories that may contain user data, so that the module can be re-downloaded. This would normally only be useful for KDE developers (who might have local changes that would be deleted).

You should not use this option normally, kdesrc-build will prompt to be re-run with it if it is needed.

This option is used to let kdesrc-build overwrite existing files which may contain user data.

This is currently only used for xsession setup for the login manager. You should not use this option normally, kdesrc-build will prompt to be re-run with it if it is needed.

You can use this option to override an option in your configuration file for every module. For instance, to override the log-dir option, you would do: --log-dir /path/to/dir.

You can use this option to override an option in your configuration file for a specific module.

This option is used to resume the build starting from the given module. You should not specify other module names on the command line.

See also: --resume-after and the section called “Resuming a failed or canceled build”. You would prefer to use this command line option if you have fixed the build error and want kdesrc-build to complete the build.

This option is used to resume the build starting after the given module. You should not specify other module names on the command line.

See also: --resume-from and the section called “Resuming a failed or canceled build”. You would prefer to use this command line option if you have fixed the build error and have also built and installed the module yourself, and want kdesrc-build to start again with the next module.

This option can be used to run kdesrc-build after it has had a build failure.

It resumes the build from the module that failed, using the list of modules that were waiting to be built before, and disables source and metadata updates as well. The use case is when a simple mistake or missing dependency causes the build failure. Once you correct the error you can quickly get back into building the modules you were building before, without fiddling with --resume-from and --stop-before.

This option is used to stop the normal build process just before a module would ordinarily be built.

For example, if the normal build list was moduleA, moduleB, moduleC, then --stop-before moduleB would cause kdesrc-build to only build moduleA.

This option is used to stop the normal build process just after a module would ordinarily be built.

For example, if the normal build list was moduleA, moduleB, moduleC, then --stop-after moduleB would cause kdesrc-build to build moduleA and moduleB.

This option controls if the build will be aborted as soon as a failure occurs. Default behavior is --stop-on-failure. You may override it if you wish to press on with the rest of the modules in the build, to avoid wasting time in case the problem is with a single module.

See also the stop-on-failure configuration file option.

Use this option to build only those modules which failed to build on a previous kdesrc-build run. This is useful if a significant number of failures occurred mixed with successful builds. After fixing the issue causing the build failures you can then easily build only the modules that failed previously.

This command causes kdesrc-build to query a parameter of the modules in the build list (either passed on the command line or read in from the configuration file), outputting the result to screen (one module per line).

This option must be provided with a “mode”, which may be one of the following:

kactivities: master
kdepim: master

Prints out dependency information on the modules that would be built using a tree format (recursive). Listed information also includes which specific commit/branch/tag is depended on and whether the dependency would be built. Note: the generated output may become quite large for applications with many dependencies.

Prints out dependency information on the modules that would be built using a tree format (recursive). In fullpath format. Note: the generated output may become quite large for applications with many dependencies.

Print installed modules and exit. This can be used to generate autocompletion for the --run option.

Do not automatically download the extra metadata needed for KDE git modules. The source updates for the modules themselves will still occur unless you pass --no-src as well.

This can be useful if you are frequently re-running kdesrc-build since the metadata does not change very often. But note that many other features require the metadata to be available. You might want to consider running kdesrc-build with the --metadata-only option one time and then using this option for subsequent runs.

Skip contacting the Git server.

Skip the build process.

Do not automatically install packages after they are built.

Only perform the metadata download process. kdesrc-build normally handles this automatically, but you might manually use this to allow the --pretend command line option to work.

Only perform the source update.

Only perform the build process.

If this is the only command-line option, it tries to install all the modules contained in log/latest/build-status. If command-line options are specified after this option, they are all assumed to be modules to install (even if they did not successfully build on the last run).

This option causes kdesrc-build to abort building a module just before the make command would have been run. This is supported for compatibility with older versions only, this effect is not helpful for the current KDE build system.

Enabling this option explicitly disables skipping the build process (an optimization controlled by the build-when-unchanged option). This is useful for making kdesrc-build run the build when you have changed something that kdesrc-build cannot check. This option is enabled by default.

Recreate the build system and make from scratch.

Run cmake (for KDE modules) or configure (for Qt™) again, without cleaning the build directory. You should not normally have to specify this, as kdesrc-build will detect when you change the relevant options and automatically re-run the build setup. This option is implied if --refresh-build is used.

This allows you to change the directory where modules will be installed to. This option implies --reconfigure, but using --refresh-build may still be required.

Generate a .vscode directory with configurations for building and debugging in Visual Studio Code. This option is disabled by default.

Enables or disables the asynchronous mode, which can perform the source code updates and module builds at the same time. If disabled, the update will be performed in its entirety before the build starts. Disabling this option will slow down the overall process. If you encounter IPC errors while running kdesrc-build try disabling it, and submitting a bug report. This option is enabled by default.

Enable or disable colorful output. By default, this option is enabled for interactive terminals.

This value adjusts the computer CPU priority requested by kdesrc-build, and should be in the range of 0-20. 0 is highest priority (because it is the least “nice”), 20 is the lowest priority. This option defaults to 10.

The file to read the configuration options from. The default value for this parameter is kdesrc-buildrc (checked in the current working directory). If this file doesn't exist, ~/.config/kdesrc-buildrc ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kdesrc-buildrc, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set) will be used instead. See also Chapter 4, Configuring kdesrc-build.

Has kdesrc-build perform the one-time initial setup necessary to prepare the system for kdesrc-build to operate, and for the newly-installed KDE software to run.

This includes:

This option is exactly equivalent to using --install-distro-packages --generate-config at the same time. In kdesrc-build (perl implementation) it additionally uses "--install-distro-packages-perl".

Installs distro packages (on supported Linux® distributions) necessary to prepare the system for kdesrc-build to operate, and for the newly-installed KDE software to run.

See also --initial-setup

Generate the kdesrc-build configuration file.

See also --initial-setup

Enables debug mode for the script. Currently, this means that all output will be dumped to the standard output in addition to being logged in the log directory like normal. Also, many functions are much more verbose about what they are doing in debugging mode.

Do not be as noisy with the output. With this switch only the basics are output.

Only output warnings and errors.

Be very descriptive about what is going on, and what kdesrc-build is doing.

Display the program version.

Only display simple help on this script.

Displays information about kdesrc-build and the operating system, that may prove useful in bug reports or when asking for help in forums or mailing lists.

Print the specifier lines (in the format that GetOpts::Long accepts) for all command line options supported by the script. This may be used by developers, for example, for generating zsh autocompletion functions.