# Getting Started with &kdevelop; — a Guided Tour

Now that you have got your new &kdevelop; &IDE;, how are you going to make good use of it? As this is a complex application, the learning curve may be somewhat steep, especially if you are not already used to this type of an Integrated Development Environment.

We will try to soften this learning curve a bit by stepping through the makings of a simple KDE C++ application. Thereby we will have a (cursory) look at:

- A first look — the user interface elements of the &kdevelop; &IDE;.
- Doing some initial configuration.
- How to create a new project.
- Some tips about dealing with documents.
- How to compile the application in this project.
- How to add classes and other detail to your project.
- What to do to debug the application.
- Some basic tools to build program or user documentation.
- Last but not least, keyboard shortcuts

Before we start, one important concept should be made clear.

## What to expect?

As said, &kdevelop; is an Integrated Development Environment. That means in essence that &kdevelop; is no development tool by itself but rather a graphical front end to easily access a wide range of development tools, many of which actually would require complex keyboard commands run from a text console.

While &kdevelop; eases many of those programming tasks, much of the complexity from this bundle of tools still remains which means that in order to fully understand the &kdevelop; &IDE; you will still need to comprehend these tools actually running beneath the surface.

Hence, we cannot teach you how to build software, but rather introduce you to some of the ways &kdevelop; was designed to ease such a software building process. If you want to learn more about what an Integrated Development Environment is meant for, you might want to have a look at the Development on &UNIX; historical overview and there especially at the Integrating Concepts and Tools chapter.

The following discussions apply to the default case, where &kdevelop; starts up in the Simplified IDEAl Window Mode. If you already did switch to another user interface mode some items may not be there as described or will behave slightly different. If in doubt which user interface mode your &kdevelop; currently uses, check with the Settings Configure KDevelop... User Interface dialog.

## A Very First Look at &kdevelop;

This is all about what you will see when you first started &kdevelop;. You will find preliminary information about:

- What is there on the surface?
- How to get some help.
- What is in the menus?
- What are those tool views for?

### On the Surface

When you start &kdevelop; for the first time you will get a display similar to this one:

The &kdevelop; initial layout

(Actually the initial &kdevelop; window will be larger, but the elements you see are the same.)

### Workspace Area and Tool View Tabs

In this initial case &kdevelop; uses the so-called IDEAl user interface mode. A workspace area of maximum possible size is surrounded left, bottom, and right by a series of buttons which act similar to tabs on a tabbed display. If you click on one of those tabs, a so-called tool view window will open which allows you to work on a specific task.

### Menu and Toolbars

On top there is the usual menubar, followed by several rows of toolbars, some being initially empty. They will get populated once there is a project open for actual work.

### Status Bar

Finally, there is a status bar on the bottom of the window where short informations on several tasks will be shown.

### How to Get Some Help

Besides the Help menu which offers answers to specific questions, the status bar and two kinds of tool tips provide some quick information.

### What Does This Menu Entry Do?

When you place the mouse cursor on a menu entry, there will usually some short information be displayed in the status bar. While in most cases this repeats just the name of the selection, in some cases it will provide additional information about the purpose of the menu command.

### What Is the Name of This Item?

On many items a short function name tool tip will pop up when you place the cursor on it for a few seconds. This is useful for quick orientation on toolbar or tool view tabs in IDEAl mode when the &IDE; has been set up to display icons only on these buttons.

### What Does This Item Do?

More information is available through expanded tool tip help for many items on the &IDE;. Select Help What's This? or press &Shift;F1, then with the question mark cursor select the item you want to know more of. You can as well open any menu this way and click on a specific menu entry (active as well as greyed disabled ones) to see if more information is available.

### What is in the menus?

There are ten menus selectable on the menubar. Most of them get fully populated once a project is open for actual work while others require at least one document be open in an editor window. In short, they will allow the following action types.

This is only a preliminary overview. For a detailed menu description see the Command Reference.

File

- ### Usual Actions

  This is pretty standard. It allows to create, open, save, print, and close document files as well as quitting the &kdevelop; application as usual.

  ### Revert All

  This allows to revert all recent, yet unsaved changes by reloading the file from the disk. This works on any file you edit, not only on those which are part of a project.

Edit

- This menu is useful only if a document is opened.

  ### Usual Actions

  It provides the usual undo/redo and cut/copy/paste actions. Furthermore it allows to select text blocks in various ways.

  ### Search and Replace

  There are two very powerful search facility available, Edit Find in Files..., and Edit Find-Select-Replace.... These allow, in addition to the usual search and replace actions limited to the the current document, to conduct global search or search-and-replace actions in one single turn.

  ### Advanced Text Edit

  There are provisions to reformat the current document and to automatically complete partially typed texts in various ways.

View

- Like the Edit menu, this menu is useful only if there is an open project. I this case there will be the following actions available (amongst others):

  ### Navigation History

  Switch back and forth through the documents &etc; you visited.

  ### Error Tracking

  Navigate to the source lines of the errors encountered in the most recent compilation/build process.

  ### Editor Related Actions

  Some entries in the View menu control the look and view of the editor you use. In case of the &kate; Part (Embedded Advanced Text Editor) there will be the following controls available:

  - Control the word wrap behavior in the document window.

  - Show or hide several border displays in the document windows: line numbers, icons, and, additionally, bookmark marks in the scroll bar.

  - Control the display of folded (temporarily hidden) sections in a source text.

Project

- All work of &kdevelop; is based on projects which basically collect source files, build management files, and other information in one project directory. In this menu you control which project to use, which properties it has, and some other managing actions. In particular:

  ### Open a Project

  Allows to create new projects, open existing ones, and import projects from other environments.

  ### Project Options

  Allows to define a whole bunch of different project properties.

  ### Classes Management

  Add new classes to the project and traverse the inheritance tree of a class.

  ### Distribute Project

  Helps to build distribution packages of the project.

Build

- This menu is all about compiling and documenting the project. Thus it is of use only when a project is actually open. In this case it provides the following actions:

  ### Compile, Link, Execute

  Allows to compile and link the whole project or parts of it as well as run the application from within the &IDE;.

  ### Prepare Build Operations

  This actually depends on the make system you use for this project. In the case of automake projects it allows to run `Makefile.cvs` and `configure` on their own. There are also provisions to remove translated files from the project in various stages of intensity.

  ### Install the Application

  Allows to install the application both in local directories as well as in system directories only accessible to the root user.

  ### API Documentation

  Build or remove a doxygen-based API documentation of the project as defined in the project options.

Debug

- Although this menu will be filled once a project is active, it of course is useful only if the actual project has been previously compiled with debugging information (this is basically set up in Project Project Options..). There are the following actions available in this case:

  ### Usual Debugger Actions

  The first section in the Debug provides a graphical interface to the GDB &GNU; symbolic debugger. It allows to start and stop your application in the debugger and step through it in various ways.

  ### Breakpoints

  &kdevelop; provides several means to set breakpoints in your application sources. One is through the use of the Toggle Breakpoint menu entry.

  ### Advanced Debugging

  Other Debug menu entries allow more sophisticated program analysis. Use &Shift;F1 to get more information about their purpose.

Scripts

- You can call various scripts from this menu to more easily accomplish tedious actions on the text in the currently selected editor window. The available actions depend on the selected script, however.

Window

- This is fairly standard. You may select any open document window as well as close one or more documents windows in here. You may even select a set of document windows to be closed in one single turn.

  Depending on the editor plugin you use may there be other menu items as well. So will the default Kate editor plugin additionally allow to split the editor window horizontally as well as vertically.

Tools

- &kdevelop; is highly customizable. You may select a favorite editor for your documents as well as provide external and plugged-in tools to extend the basic &IDE; capabilities. The Tools menu reflects most of this setup.

  ### Advanced Editing

  The upper set of Tools menu entries will be provided by the editor plugin which is in use. You may select your favorite editor via Settings Configure KDevelop... Editor. Once an editable document file is selected, the upper part of the Tools menu will provide advanced editing commands specific to the editor part in use.

  ### Web Side Handling

  In case the active document window contains a HTML page (⪚ displayed from a Documentation selection), the Tools will show additional menu entries which provide various means to handle Web pages.

  ### Other Tools

  Usually there will be a bunch of other entries according to the currently available tools. Use &Shift; F1 to get more information about their purposes.

Settings

- This menu allows you to show and hide menubar, toolbars and statusbar. Also, you can configure shortcuts, toolbars, notifications, the editor and &kdevelop;'s general behavior.

Help

- Here you can open this KDevelop manual, look up terms in various documentation files, open man pages (the traditional UNIX manual format) and info pages (the GNU manual format). Furthermore you can report bugs here or get some info about your current KDevelop version and its authors.

### What are those tool views for?

In the IDEAl user interface mode the workspace will be surrounded by three areas of buttons, so-called tool view tabs. They provide access to tool view windows which accomplish main tasks during software development. Each of these three tool view areas serves a different main purpose.

- ### Left Side

  Provides access to navigation and selection tools

- ### Bottom

  These views display messages produced by various tools.

- ### Right Side

  Provides access to documentation and source management tools.

The number of tool view tabs shown will change once a project is open for actual work. More tools to work on that project will be available then. The actual number of tool views depends on the Plugin Tools being currently available to &kdevelop;. You will find more on this topic in the Configuring KDevelop chapter.

Currently, with no project open and the default number of plugin tools loaded, you will find the following tool views. Clicking on a tab will open respectively close its tool view window.

Navigation and Selection

- ### File Selector

  Provides a panel to navigate the directory tree and select files for work just like you do in the &konqueror;. Clicking a file will open it in an appropriate editor window in the workspace area. A right click in the file selector area will pop up a navigation and file manipulation menu.

  ### File List

  Lists the currently open files. Clicking on a file will usually select its editor window in the workspace area. Use this to quickly navigate in a large number of open files. Furthermore this view provides a means to organize the open files into different sessions. This is particularly useful in very large and complex projects to help the developer concentrate on different tasks. Right clicking a file will pop up a file manipulation menu.

Messages Displays

- ### Application

  Displays the output from an application started from within &kdevelop;.

  ### Diff

  Used to display patch file contents. Displays the output from the difference viewer tool started from the Tools Difference Viewer... menu.

  ### Messages

  Displays messages produced by the build tools called from within &kdevelop;, usually from the Build menu.

  ### Find in Files

  Displays the list of items found by the global search operation started from the Edit Find in Files... menu. Clicking on a line here will automatically open that file at the specified position in an editor window.

  ### Replace

  Lists the results of the global search-and-replace operation issued from the Edit Find-Select-Replace... menu. In this view you can decide on every found item whether you really want it be replaced or not.

  This global search-and-replace facility is actually available only after a project has been loaded into &kdevelop;. Otherwise the global replace tool in the Edit Find-Select-Replace... menu will in fact be be disabled.

  ### Konsole

  Opens a &kde; Konsole like terminal emulator window where you can use keyboard commands in a traditional &UNIX; command line interface.

Documentation and Source Manipulation

- ### Documentation

  &kdevelop; provides access to a whole bunch of documentation through this tool. You may here access document files, usually online from remote locations, in a structured way. And there are several ways available to directly access valuable information from &kde; or &Qt; manuals.

  See the Documentation and Configuring the Documentation chapters for more details.

  ### Code Snippets

  This tool allows you to permanently store selected texts for later use in other editing cycles. It is a very flexible tool, as any text snipped stored here may contain a set of variables which will get their actual values at the time when you insert such a snippet in some other text.

  More information on this is available in the Code Snippets and Setting Up the Code Snippets Tool chapters.

## A Bit of Configuration

Before we actually start a first example project, we should tailor the &kdevelop; behavior to our needs. Although most of the default settings will be appropriate for now, there are a few places which better should be adjusted.

If you want to know more about &kdevelop; configuration, have a look at the Configuring KDevelop chapter.

### Some General Settings

To configure &kdevelop;, click the Settings menu and select Configure KDevelop.... The Configure KDevelop dialog will pop up, showing the following General settings page to the right.

The &kdevelop; general configuration dialog

Most of the defaults will be o.k. But you will probably want to change two of those settings.

### Default projects directory

At first start of &kdevelop; this will most likely be preset to your home directory. Most people however prefer a dedicated projects directory for software development. Change the text box to your preferred parent development directory. You may select it from the directory tree if you press the Open file dialog button labeled with a folder icon to the right of it.

In our examples we will assume a (somewhat artificial) user called `devel`. Thus always replace this devel by your user name. Our devel user will utilize the `/home/devel/projects` parent directory for actual development. Again, replace `projects` with your development directory name.

&kdevelop; will by default set up an own subdirectory below this parent for every new project you create. So will ⪚ all files of a project named Hello in our case be located in the `/home/devel/projects/hello` directory.

You may of course temporarily override these directory settings if you need to. See the &appwizard; chapter for more info on this.

### Compiler output

Whenever &kdevelop; compiles some source, it will display the messages of the make, etc. build tools in the Messages window in the lower part of the workspace area. Usually these messages will be overwhelmingly wordy. To keep a better overview of what happens, &kdevelop; has some means of shortening those messages built in.

Depending on the &kdevelop; version you use, the Compiler output selection may be preset to Long, which will cause all message contents be fully shown. You may probably want to change this to the far more convenient Very Short setting. Just select this from the drop down box.

Be aware that only most basic information will be shown in the Messages window this way. In case of errors during ⪚ a build run you will most likely want to see more, if not all, of the message texts. They are not lost, however. Just right click into the Messages window and select ⪚ Full Compiler Output from the popup menu.

### Initializing Documentation Search Indexes

There is another, not so obvious, item which preferably should be initialized before you start actual development work. This is because you will want to perform documentation search regularly during development. &kdevelop; requires some search indexes be created before such search operations can be performed. So let's initialize them before we attempt our first steps toward actual &kdevelop; work.

Open the Documentation tool view at the right side of the &kdevelop; main window. There open the Search dialog page.

Where to generate the search indexes.

Now press the Update Config button to make sure the basic search tools are properly set up. A dialog should pop up, telling Configuration file updated. Click OK to make it disappear.

This done, &kdevelop; will be ready to parse the documentation it knows of and build some useful search indexes from it. Press the Update Index button to the right. Now the Generating Search Index dialog will pop up showing the progress of the index build operations.

&kdevelop; is generating documentation search indexes.

This will take some time depending on the size of documentation and the speed of your machine. But finally the Cancel will make place to OK. Just press this button to proceed.

- This usually should work out of the box. In some cases the htdig application &kdevelop; uses to perform its full text searches might not be properly set up. Refer to the Setting Up Text Search Indexes chapter for more help in this case.

- To be able to look up &kde; and &Qt; specific API documentation, it is mandatory that the KDELibs Apidocs were present when &kdevelop; was installed. If you experience problems building the indexes or perform the identifier lookup examples later in this chapter, make sure that this documentation exists and is accessible to &kdevelop;. See Installing KDevelop fore more detail.

## Starting a New Project

Almost any application will consist of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of files which need kept structured and maintainable. To accomplish this, &kdevelop; organizes software development tasks in projects. Thus the first practical step to develop software in &kdevelop; usually is to create a new project.

Fortunately this is fairly easily accomplished. &kdevelop; provides the so-called &appwizard; tool for this. (See the Getting Started — the &appwizard; chapter for more.)

We will now start a simple &kde; application project to illustrate how easily this is accomplished and which files and tools &kdevelop; will have provided. Thereby we will have a short look at:

- How to create a new project with the help of the &appwizard;.
- Which files the &appwizard; initially did set up.
- What about the additional tool view shown with the project?

### How to Create a New Project

Let us create a rather simple Hello World &kde; project. Just follow these steps.

1. To start the &appwizard; click the Project New Project... menu.

2. The Create New Project dialog will pop up. In the upper left All Projects window there will be a number of programming languages listed.

   1. We want to build a &kde; C++ application as usual, thus click on the + label left of the C++ label to open this branch.

   2. A series of possible application targets will be displayed. We will build a &kde; application, thus open the next sub-branch via the + label next to KDE

   3. Now you will be offered a series of possible project templates. Navigate down to the end of this branch and click Simple KDE Application.

      A preview and short description of the application this project template will produce pops up in the two windows to the right.

      Selecting a Hello World project template

   4. Our application will need a name. Find the Properties area on the dialog bottom and enter a suitable name into the Application name input field.

      We use Hello in our example, but you can use whatever you like, provided the name consists of letters, number digits, and underlines only. You will find that the &appwizard; rejects any other character.

   5. Make sure the Location text box below the input field shows the name of your top project directory as set up in the A Bit of Configuration chapter above. If it does not do so, enter a suitable directory name or select one from the directory list provided by the folder labeled button to the right.

      If all went well, the Final location line at the bottom will show the directory path your new project will use. In case there was an (invalid) suffix appended, try another name for your project and/or make sure the top project directory in the Location text box really exists and is writable.

   6. Once everything is right, the Next button in the bottom row of the dialog will be enabled. Click it to proceed.

3. This will lead you to the Project Options dialog page. Make sure the Author and Email text boxes are properly filled in. Usually they will default to your general &kde; user settings as given in the Password & User Account dialog of the &kde; Control Center. If not, change them to some settings you prefer for your application.

   Provide your name and (optionally) email address.

   You must provide an Author name at least. This is mandatory for the application files setup.

   If all is right, the Next button will be enabled. Click it to further proceed.

4. The following Version Control System, Template for .h Files, and Template for .cpp Files dialog pages are not of interest for now. Skip them by clicking the Next buttons and, finally, the Finish button.

That was all! The &appwizard; will take over and construct a series of initial files in the Final location directory you provided in step 2c above.

Once this file creation phase is finished, &kdevelop; will open an editor window for the application main window implementation file (which is `hello.cpp` in our example), so you can readily proceed.

### Initial Project Files

Even if our sample Hello project is fairly simple, the &appwizard; did create a whole bunch of source and project management files. You will most easily list them if you open the File Tree tool view on the bottom left. This will open a file list similar to the one below.

Initial files in our Hello World project

To demonstrate the main bunch of files the &appwizard; produced, we did open most of the directory branches in the left-hand File Tree tool view window. Just click the branch names in the tree to see for yourself.

Additionally, just for demonstration, we did as well open most of the branches the Automake Manager tool view window to the right where some of the project sources are listed, too.

#### Copyright Issues

All &GNU; conformant applications must be copyrighted. There are two levels which require copyright notices, individual source files and run-time application level. The &appwizard; did already put appropriate copyright and licensing information into the project files.

#### Source File Level Copyrights

Do you remember the Project Options dialog page in the new project setup? You had to provide your (the developer's) name and optionally an email address there. Now refer to the top of the hello.cpp editor window currently displayed in the workspace area. The &appwizard; did enter these statements on top of the licensing header of every source file it created.

    /***************************************************************************
     *   Copyright (C) 2006 by Joe User   *
     *   joe@user.com   *
     *                                                                         *
     *   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify  *

You will find exactly the same text headers in every source file you will create inside &kdevelop; (provided you use the proper built in tools for file creation). &kdevelop; remembers these settings in some template files you may find in the `templates` directory.

#### Application Run-Time Copyrights

Once your &kde; application runs, the user may display some About data, usually from the Help menu. The &appwizard; did also take care of this. If you have a look at the `main.cpp` file, you will find an entry similar to the one below.

    int main(int argc, char **argv)
    {
        KAboutData about("hello", I18N_NOOP("Hello"), version, description,
    		     KAboutData::License_GPL, "(C) 2006 Joe User", 0, 0,
                         "joe@user.com");
        about.addAuthor( "Joe User", 0, "joe@user.com" );

This will put the main developer's name (Joe User in our case) and email address into the About copyright page in the display and list this name and address on the Authors page there as well.

Whenever you make substantial changes to an existing project, be sure to enter your name and email address to the copyright notices on every file you changed and to the run-time copyright display as well. Don't be shy, you help the open source society considerably if you do so.

#### Initial Source Files

The &appwizard; did put the source files into the `src` sub-directory of the project's directory. You will find the `main.cpp`, `hello.h`, and `hello.cpp` files there as you may have possibly expected.

There are some additional files you usually will find in a typical &kde; application, namely

- `hello.desktop` contains some meta data used by &kdevelop; to maintain and start the application.

- `hi16-app-hello.png`, and `hi32-app-hello.png` contain some initial default icons, &kdevelop; will use for application display.

- Finally, `helloui.rc` contains a description of the application's user interface, currently the menus the application will provide.

#### Initial Application Documentation

In the `doc/en` subdirectory of the project you will find the `index.docbook` file. This is a default template from where you can start to write a suitable user documentation.

#### Project and Auxiliary Files

You will have noted that the files we introduced so far are listed in boldface in the File Tree tool view while most of the other files are not. This depicts the substantially different tasks these files are used for. The contents of those bold listed files directly influence the application. Source files will produce the code to be run, others will provide necessary data or documentation. These files must be maintained and orderly processed in the build stages by the project, hence they are called project files.

If you have a look at the lower Automake Manager window to the right of the workspace area you will find all project files listed as well. The &automanag; tool uses this knowledge to take care of the build control as we shortly will see.

The other, non-bold listed files are of more auxiliary nature. They belong to several distinctive classes as follows:

- #### Project Build Control

  These files control the compile, install, documentation building, &etc; processes. If the project utilizes the &GNU; autotools machinery as our example does, you will find a `Makefile.am` file in each project directory. These are kind of basic make core files which contain build control commands and will be processed in conjunction with various `configure` files during the build stages. Such a build produces a final `Makefile` in every directory. And from these in turn the make utility will finally build the binaries of the application.

  Those `Makefile.am` files need to be maintained throughout the development process. Luckily, &kdevelop; relieves you of most of this burden by the &automanag; tool, which basically is a graphical front end to maintain `Makefile.am` contents.

  Other project build control files currently listed are `configure.in.in` and `subdirs` in the project root directory. They will be processed by some of the files in the `admin` &kde; specific administration directory to produce more `configure` and `Makefile` type files and finally the application's binaries.

- #### &kdevelop; Control Files

  &kdevelop; needs some control and administration data on its own. These are located in the project root directory, in our example `hello.kdevelop`, `hello.kdevelop.pcs`, and `hello.kdevses`.

  Of particular importance in each project is the `xxx.kdevelop` (where xxx denotes the project name) file. It is the main KDevelop 3 Project File and needed if you later want load this project into the &IDE;.

  Never do manually modify, rename, or even delete any of these &kdevelop; control files! The &IDE; will most likely not function properly on your project afterwards.

- #### GNU Project Description Files

  Some files in the project root directory are mandatory in any &GNU; conformant application. These are: `AUTHORS`, `ChangeLog`, `INSTALL`, `COPYING` (which contains the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE), `INSTALL`, `NEWS`, `README`, and `TODO`.

- #### Other Files

  A few more files, not mentioned yet, are:

  - `Doxyfile` controls the creation of the project specific &API; internal programming interface documentation.

  - The `templates` directory containes file templates the &IDE; uses as stubs to create new source files. You may at any time edit these templates. The new contents will be reflected in the next source files you create of the related types.

    You may ⪚ want to realign the right hand stars in the copyright lines the &appwizard; inserted into the `cpp` and `h` template files, so the source files created from them will look less awkward.

  - The `po` directory will be used for localization purposes. It is essentially part of the project files (contains a `Makefile.am`) but will mainly be used in translation processing. Not of main interest to the application developer, however.

  - Finally, the `admin` directory is specially needed in &kde; oriented applications. It provides a whole bunch of files necessary to maintain the application's sources and binaries so they will integrate properly into the &kde; environment.

### Additional Tool Views

As you will have noticed, as soon as the &appwizard; had the new project ready, several additional tool views were provided. These make sense during project development only and, in short, provide the following functionality.

The tool views actually visible depend on the plugins currently loaded into &kdevelop;. There are ways to control this. See the Plugin Tools chapter for instructions.

#### Navigation and Selection Tools (left side)

- #### Bookmarks

  You can mark any text file line in order to quickly return to this position from everywhere. &kdevelop; will remember all those bookmarks, even if you close the editor window afterwards. The Bookmarks tool view lists all those bookmarks by file name and line number. You need only click such an entry to open the editor window accordingly and position the cursor on that line.

- #### Classes

  Lists classes, methods, &etc; known in the project. Clicking the entry opens the appropriate header or source file in an editor window and positions the cursor at the respective declaration or definition.

- #### File Groups

  Sorts the files in the projects into various utility groups, &ie; Sources, User Interface, Icons, Translations, and Others. Clicking an entry opens that file in an editor window.

- #### Variables

  This is used by the debugger tool to display, evaluate, and watch variables during debug runs.

#### Messages (bottom)

- #### Valgrind

  Valgrind is a run-time program analyzer. This tool view lists the results of such an analyze run. It is used ⪚ to find memory leaks.

- #### Security Problems

  There is a Security Checker plugin tool for &kdevelop;. It analyzes the currently edited source file for several common security problems which may occur in the application and notifies the user in this tool view window.

- #### Breakpoints

  This tool view allows to explicitly set, clear, and manage debug breakpoints in the application source files. It is used in conjunction with the debugger.

- #### CTags

  Allows to create a database of identifier indexes using the popular CTags application. This tags database may then be used from out this tool view window to look up any needed identifier in the project sources. Clicking a thus found item line will open an editor window and position the cursor on the appropriate identifier there.

- #### Problems

  &kdevelop; keeps track of common programming problems in the currently edited source file and notifies the user in this tool view window.

#### Source Management (right side)

- #### Automake Manager

  The &automanag; tool is basically a graphical front end to maintain the contents of the `Makefile.am` files located in each project directory. This tool view uses two windows to control its work. The upper window mirrors part of the project subdirectories, namely those which explicitly contain project files. Each subdirectory of this kind must contain a `Makefile.am` file and is termed a subproject in the &automanag; context.

  Clicking a subproject entry opens a suitable display of the project files in this subproject in the lower window. The files listed there will be grouped according to their `Makefile.am` functionality in this subproject.

  The &automanag; is a very powerful tool to manage the project and its subprojects as well as the roles project files play in building the application. We will have a short look at a few major details below. See the Building and Project Management chapter for a more extensive description.

## Some Tips About Dealing With Documents

In our example project the &appwizard; did leave the `hello.cpp` file open in an editor window, so you can immediately start working. Now, we may well assume your are knowledgeable about using an editor, so we do not need talk much about this here. But there are some handy &kdevelop; specifics about dealing with such tabbed editor windows and the documents you are working on. We will have a short look at some of them, namely:

- How to easily switch between header and implementation files.
- How to quickly access declarations and definitions.
- How to arrange editor windows to your current needs.
- How to keep an eye on common problems.

### Switching Between Header and Implementation Files

&kdevelop; provides a quick and easy way to switch from a given implementation (`.cpp`) file to the corresponding header (`.h`) file and vice versa. Just right click into the editor window you want to switch. A menu similar to the following will pop up.

How to switch between implementation and header files.

Find the Switch header/implementation entry and select it. &kdevelop; will look up the corresponding header or implementation file and open it in another editor window. In our example, if you did right click into the `hello.cpp` source, the `hello.h` file will be displayed and the cursor positioned there.

There is even more. If you do right click inside the text of a class implementation, &kdevelop; will position the cursor on the corresponding declaration line in the header file. And vice versa, right clicking on a declaration line will bring you to the corresponding class implementation.

If the editor window with the file to be switched to already exists, &kdevelop; will of course activate this one and reposition the cursor there if necessary.

### How to Access Declarations and Definitions

But what if you are working on a source file and want to look up the declaration or definition of an identifier you just found there? Well, this is equally easily accomplished. Basically all you need to do is to right click on the identifier in question.

There are two different cases to consider, however, namely:

- Accessing externally defined identifiers, and
- dealing with project internal text items.

#### External Declarations and Definitions

In a most common case you want to look up an identifier which was defined externally to your project. In &kde; projects such identifiers are most likely documented in various &kde; or &Qt; libraries. If &kde; and &kdevelop; were properly installed, &kdevelop; will be able to access such so-called API documentation and be able to search it for identifiers of this kind.

Let us look at an example. In the `hello.cpp` editor window find the following lines.

    Hello::Hello()
        : KMainWindow( 0, "Hello" )
    {

Right click on `KMainWindow`. A menu will pop up. There select the Search in Documentation: KMainWindow entry and release the mouse button. Now the Documentation tool view will open, showing the `KMainWindow` entry as search item on the Search sub-page. And a short while after another editor window will open in the workspace area, showing the KDE API Reference page of the `KMainWindow` class.

This all will look like the following. (We deliberately opened the Documentation, Search page already to illustrate the result of the menu selection.)

How to look up an externally documented identifier.

You might as well select Find Documentation: KMainWindow. In this case the Finder sub-page of the Documentation tool view will show up, usually providing a selection of pages containing the search term. (In our example this will probably be the `KMainWindow` and `KMainWindowInterface` classes. Select the one you are interested in and the corresponding documentation will be displayed in an editor window.

If this did not work, then there is probably no documents index yet. Did you initialize the indexes as shown above? If not, please do so, then come back here and try again.

#### Project Internal Declarations and Definitions

Such search facilities in external documentation have their limitations, however. Of course one cannot look up an identifier externally if it is only defined and used inside the current project. But there is help. &kdevelop; can use indexes built by the CTags application to search the sources in your project.

Before we can use this on our Hello example project, we must however first generate a suitable index. This is done by the CTags tool view at the bottom of the workspace area.

When you click the CTags tab, a dialog window will open where you will find the following key in the lower right corner.

Build a CTags index with the Regenerate key.

Press the Regenerate button and wait a few seconds. Then the No CTags Database Found will be replaced by the current date. Now you are ready to perform some identifier look ups in your project source.

The date next to the Regenerate button is there to remind you of possibly too old indexes. Whenever you are obviously not able to look up some identifier in your project, consider regenerating the index. On large projects this might take considerable time, but you should make it a habit to regenerate the index regularly after extensive source file changes.

To look up an identifier in your project sources there are several possibilities.

- #### Use the CTags tool view

  This is easy. Just start typing the identifier name you are interested in into the Lookup input field in the bottom left. &kdevelop; will try to complete the word you have typed so far and show all occurrences of those identifiers which start with this character sequence.

  If for example you want to know wherever the Hello identifier was used in our example project, type an "H" into the Lookup input field. &kdevelop; will immediately start working and present you a result like this:

  How to look up an identifier in the CTags tool view.

  If you click one of the listed entries, &kdevelop; will open an editor window with this file and position the cursor on the appropriate place.

- #### Use a context menu in a source file

  This is handy while you are working on a certain source file. Assume you are studying the `main.cpp` file of our Hello example project. There you find the following line

          Hello *mainWin = 0;

  and wonder whatever the Hello was used for in the program. To find out, simply right click on this Hello identifier. A menu will pop up in response to this right mouse click, featuring the following lines near the bottom.

  Getting CTags information on a project internal identifier.

  Click what you are interested in, say CTags - Go to Definition: Hello, and &kdevelop; will immediately open the `hello.cpp` editor window and position the cursor right in front of this class definition:

      Hello::Hello()
          : KMainWindow( 0, "Hello" )
      {

- #### Do a global search

  This is especially useful if you want to look up arbitrary text in your project source. There are two possibilities to start a global search from within &kdevelop;.

  - Start a global search from the Edit Find in Files... menu. Or

  - Directly make use of the context menu with a right mouse click in the editor window.

  We will illustrate the second possibility on our Hello example project. The outcome of the menu call will essentially be the same. Let us assume you are studying the `hello.cpp` source file and have the cursor positioned on the first Hello occurrence there. Now you wonder, where this one word Hello was used in the project source and how many occurrences there are. This is a typical case where to use &kdevelop;'s global search facilities.

  Now, still keeping the cursor somewhere on this Hello in the source text, click the right mouse button. The now well known context menu will pop up, where you should select the Grep: Hello line.

  Initiating a global search from within an editor window.

  This will pop up the following Find in Files dialog (exactly the same as if you did use the Edit Find in Files... menu).

  A versatile graphical front end to perform global searches in the project.

  As you see, this is a very versatile tool to initiate find-and-grep searches throughout your project. We won't delve further into details here, but you may want to experiment with this facility on your own. For the moment, there should be our Hello be preselected in the Pattern field. If it is not, just type it in, then press the Search button at the bottom right.

  Now the Find in Files tool view will open at the bottom, showing you file names and lines of all literal occurrences of Hello in our example project. As usual, if you click an entry, &kdevelop; will get you to exactly that position in an editor window in the workspace area.

  There are two lines of special interest in the tool view window.

  - Right on top you will find the command sequences &kdevelop; did actually use to perform the search. This will be useful to more precisely control the search outcome.

  - On bottom the number of occurrences found in these search run will be listed. In our example this should read *** 11 matches found ***.

  &kdevelop; will remember these search results throughout the currently running session. If you initiate another global search, its results will display in another tabbed window in the Find in Files tool view window.

### Arranging Editor Windows

When your work with large complex projects you will often end up with quite a lot of tabbed editor windows residing on the tab bar. This makes specific facilities to clean up, order, and group all those editor tabs necessary. &kdevelop; provides several means for this. We will have a short look at some of them.

- How to remove unneeded tabs.
- How to rearrange the tabs.
- How to view several files simultaneously in the workspace area.
- How to edit C++ source and header files simultaneously
- How to group source files into development sessions.

#### Cleaning up the Tabs Row

If the vast amount of editor window tabs becomes badly arranged at all, you usually may want to close all those tabs you really do not need any more. &kdevelop; provides several facilities to do so, the usual way of bulk closing open editor windows and a more specific approach where you can expressly command which ones to close and which to keep open.

#### Closing Several Tabs At Once

This is kind of a bulk approach to close unnecessarily open tabs which you may find in other &kde; applications as well. You can use the Window menu or right click on a tab to either

- close the currently selected editor window,

- close all other open editor windows, or

- close all editor windows at once (available from the Window menu only).

#### Closing Selected Sets of Tabs

The step-by-step approach of closing individual editor window tabs can become awkward if there are a great number of tabs from which you want to still keep several open. Instead of searching and closing one editor window tab after another &kdevelop; provides a means to select the candidates from a list and close those, and only those, with one single mouse click.

Let us illustrate this on a simple example. In our Hello example project let us assume there were several files open for edit: `hello.cpp`, `hello.h`, `helloui.rc`, `hello.desktop`, and `main.cpp`. Now you want to close all of them except `hello.cpp` and `hello.h`. The easiest way to do so is with the File List tool view. Because this list of open files is alphabetically ordered you can more easily find the ones you want to be closed. Proceed as follows:

1. Open File List and, with the Ctrl key held down, click the files you want to be closed in the list.

2. Then, keeping the mouse pointer on a file name in the list, click the right mouse button.

3. From the File List popup menu select Close Selected.

How to close selected editor windows in one step.

That was all. &kdevelop; will have closed all editor windows at your wish, and you are ready to proceed with a clean tab bar again.

#### How to Rearrange Edit Window Tabs

Even if you have only the really necessary editor windows open you may still want to have their tabs arranged in some logical way. &kdevelop; provides some common means to do so, in short:

#### Basic Setup — Where to Position New Tabs

By default, when you open a new editor window, its tab will be inserted to the right of the editor window tab currently in use. This can be changed so that the new tab will open to the far right on the tab bar.

You must change a basic user interface setting in &kdevelop; to enable this behavior.

1. Select Settings Configure KDevelop...

2. In the left hand icon bar on the dialog popup click the User Interface icon. The User Interface dialog page will be now shown.

3. In the left bottom corner there find the section labeled Tabbed Browsing. Remove the check mark on the Open new tab after current tab line.

4. Close &kdevelop; and restart it again. Now the new editor window tabs will open at the far right end of the current tabs row.

Unfortunately, this setting cannot be changed on the fly during a development session. You must make up your mind which behavior you prefer in the long run and then stick to it, at least until the next start of &kdevelop;.

#### How to Rearrange the Tabs

As development tasks do vary over time, the need to rearrange the tabbed editor windows will more or less often arise. This is easily accomplished in &kdevelop;.

Just click the tab you want to move with the middle mouse button and move the mouse a short distance. The cursor will change to a crossed-arrow pattern. You can now drag this tab, holding the middle mouse button down, until it did skip into the place where you want it to be.

#### Viewing Several Files Simultaneously

At first sight there is always at most one single editor window open to work on a source file. Although you may fast switch the tabbed windows, there are times where you want have several files open at once, ⪚ for reference purposes or to keep complex tasks under better control. To accomplish this, &kdevelop; provides a way to split the workspace area into different, simultaneously visible sections which each can hold their own series of tabbed windows.

There are two split commands which you can reach either through the Window menu or by right clicking either into a tabbed window or on the window tab itself. We will illustrate this splitting behavior again with our Hello example project.

Assume there are two source files open on the tab bar, `hello.cpp` and `hello.h`. Now, while working on the `hello.cpp` source, you often need to refer to the declarations in the `hello.h` headers file, so you want to keep both files open simultaneously.

To get this done, right click on the tab of, say, `hello.h`. The following menu will then pop up.

How to split the current workspace area into two parts.

Select the Split Horizontal entry. This will split the current workspace area in the middle and move the tabbed editor window holding the `hello.h` file into the lower part.

The workspace has been split horizontally.

Note the dotted separator line between both windows. You can grab it with the mouse and adjust the heights of the editor windows according to your needs.

There are a few points to note.

- The split workspace areas are fully functional at their own. This means, new tabbed windows will open in the workspace which contains the currently active editor window. And you can split any sub-area again to your wish, thus keeping as much windows open simultaneously as you need.

- Any split will move the currently active editor window into the new workspace sub-area, either downward or to the right. The other tabbed windows all remain where they were. You cannot directly move tabbed windows between split areas, instead you need to explicitly close the window in one workspace area and reopen it in another to regroup.

- Also, there is no direct way to close a split area again. It closes automatically, once the last tabbed window in it was closed.

#### Edit C++ Source and Header Files Simultaneously

There is a neat application of the above mentioned workspace split feature built into &kdevelop;. It allows to automatically keep a `.cpp` source and its accompanying `.h` header file side by side open in the workspace area. And, optionally, it allows to work on both files synchronously, such that if you select a declaration in the header file &kdevelop; will navigate to the respective definition in the source file and vice versa.

This feature is however deactivated by default. If you want to use it in your project you need to activate it.

Select Project Project Options. The Project Options dialog will pop up. In the left hand icon bar there select C++ Support and subsequently the Navigation tab on the dialog page which will display on the right side.

Have C++ source and header files be displayed side by side.

Now check the Enable split of Header/Source files box. This will enable Automatic Synchronize and Vertical by default. Keep these settings for now and press OK.

To illustrate this feature, now close in our example Hello project both the `hello.cpp` and `hello.h` editor windows, if necessary. Then select `hello.cpp` again from the `src` subdirectory of the project. The editor window will open as usual. But if you now open the `hello.h` belonging to it, &kdevelop; will automatically split the workspace and open this header file editor window just beneath the `hello.cpp` window.

There is even more, as we mentioned already. In the `hello.cpp` editor find ⪚ this constructor definition line:

    Hello::Hello()

and put the cursor there. Then look at the `hello.h` window below and note how &kdevelop; did navigate to the corresponding default constructor declaration line.

&kdevelop; automatically navigated to the constructor declaration.

This works vice versa as well. Whenever you put the cursor somewhere into a construct in one editor window, &kdevelop; will navigate to the corresponding construct in the other.

#### Grouping Source Files Into Development Sessions

When your project grows larger, and the development tasks become more and more complex and force you to often switch between different, even distinct sets of files, it is about time to organize your development work into distinct sessions. The File List tool view of &kdevelop; allows you do to just this.

On top of the File List tool view window there is a tool bar where you can create, save, select, and remove such sessions. Or alternatively use the View View Sessions sub-menu.

We will illustrate this facility again with our Hello example project. Assume you want to always open the `hello.cpp`, `hello.h`, and `main.cpp` files all in one step, no matter what development task you just did perform in the project. To accomplish this, you first need to create a new development session named, say, sources.

Use development sessions to remember groups of files.

This is a multiple step approach as follows.

1. Create a new session

   1. Click the New Session icon top left in the File List tool view window.

   2. A dialog will pop up. In the Enter the name of the session input field give your new session a name, ⪚ sources.

   3. Close the dialog with OK. The new session will now be listed in the drop down box on the toolbar.

2. This new session will initially be empty. You must populate it with the files you want to be kept there.

   1. Open all files you want to be grouped in this development session. In our example we decided to keep `hello.cpp`, `hello.h`, and `main.cpp` there as planned.

   2. Once your file list is complete, click the Save Session icon in the toolbar. Do not skip this step, &kdevelop; will forget the file list otherwise.

That was it. Whenever you select the sources session from the Open Session drop down box, &kdevelop; will close all currently open editor windows and open the remembered ones (`hello.cpp`, `hello.h`, and `main.cpp` in our example) instead.

You can define as many sessions as you wish in the context of your project. If you want to change the session's contents, just update the remembered file list with a Save Session click. And if you want get rid of a session, select it in the drop down box, then click the Delete Session icon in the toolbar right.

There is even more. You can force &kdevelop; to open a given session by default when it loads the project. Just select the session in the drop down box on the Projects Project Options File List project options configuration page.

Let &kdevelop; open a specific session when the project is loaded.

### Keeping an Eye on Common Problems

When you open an editor window containing a source file, &kdevelop; will parse its contents. This allows the built in problem reporter to scan the source text for some common errors it knows of. And it can alert the user of different places which have been marked for special treatment.

Let us illustrate this facility with our Hello example project.

- Open an editor window with the `main.cpp` source file.

- Make sure it still contains the following line somewhere towards the end:

              /// @todo do something with the command line args here

  This was inserted by the &appwizard; when you created the Hello project in the Starting a New Project chapter above.

- Now open the Problems tool view in the bottom tabs row. If all went right, it will currently report this todo:

  &kdevelop; is alerting a source code line containing a todo mark.

The format of the `/// @todo` command is for special treatment by the Doxygen code documenter, which we will look at briefly in the Documentation section below. It is not mandatory that you use this format, the more common `TODO` and `FIXME` comment marks will be recognized as well.

If you ⪚ insert the following `TODO` and `FIXME` comment lines in our `hello.cpp` example file

    Hello::Hello()
        : KMainWindow( 0, "Hello" )
    {
        // set the shell's ui resource file
        // TODO check the user interface
        setXMLFile("helloui.rc");

        // FIXME change to a better suited greeting
        new QLabel( "Hello World", this, "hello label" );
    }

you will find them listed in the Problems tool view as well:

The problem reporter listing lines which require attention in the currently edited file.

Note the other tabs in the Problem reporter tool view window, especially Fixme, and Todo. If you open them, you will find all `FIXME` and `TODO` marked lines, &kdevelop; has found so far in this session. For example the `TODO` alerts will currently look thus:

The problem reporter has collected the `TODO` alerts.

The Errors tab will however not list every coding error you make. This is the job of other tools in ⪚ the build process. But you will find here alerts of some common programming mistakes which would likely go unnoticed otherwise and probably be catched with difficulties during complex debugging session.

You will find the &kdevelop; problem reporter facility a very valuable tool, so check the Problems tool view regularly in the development process.

## How to Compile a Project

Compiling a project in &kdevelop; requires several setup steps and then building the application. All these are available through the Build menu.

Building a project requires several steps.

We are interested for now in the upper section only of this menu. The entries there are sorted in order of their importance. Thus the most often needed command is on top, the Build Project entry, which will cause all of the project be initialized, compiled and linked as needed. Other entries are there to compile selected project portions or a single file only, to perform several initialization sequences, or to install the completed application binaries.

For now we will concentrate on several facilities which &kdevelop; provides for project setup, initializing, building, and running an application. In general, this includes:

- Looking briefly at the basic build cycle.
- Looking at some basic means to configure a project.

### The Basic Build Cycle

Once you created a new project you usually want to check if everything went right so far. This implies a first build and test run of the application, which we will do now. In order to initially compile a project there are several steps to perform, which we will briefly look at.

- How to initialize the project for a first build.
- How to do the initial configuration.
- How to build the project.
- How to run the application from within &kdevelop;.

This discussion implies that your project is based on the &GNU; autotools, which enabled the &automanag; tool in &kdevelop; as our example Hello project does. If you created another type project, ⪚ for the &Qt; based QMake project manager, there will be other facilities available in the menus or perhaps even none of them. You will have to consult the respective vendor documentation on project management and application building in these cases.

#### Initialize the Project for the Build

When the &appwizard; created our Hello example project, it left it in a sort of raw, virgin state. The &GNU; autotools chain dictates several initialization steps to be performed before the application could be actually compiled and linked. If you try to build a project in such a raw state, ⪚ by selecting the Build Build Project menu or pressing the F8 function key, you will get the following warning.

Trying to build a raw automake based project.

You may press the Run Them button in which case &kdevelop; will try to automatically run all required setup steps prior to compiling and linking the application. But we will look at those initial steps in sequence, so cancel the dialog by pressing Do Not run.

As mentioned already, compiling and linking the application is done through the Build menu. Call it up and select Run automake and friends.

Initiating a basic initialization run.

&kdevelop; will now open the Messages tool view window at the bottom and list a series of messages produced by several make tools. If everything went right, the final line will read `*** Success ***`.

If you scroll back to the top, you will find the command line, &kdevelop; issued to call up the tools beneath the surface:

    cd '/home/devel/projects/hello' && \
    WANT_AUTOCONF_2_5="1" WANT_AUTOMAKE_1_6="1" gmake -f Makefile.cvs

This basically tells that &kdevelop; first switched to the root directory of our example project. Then it set up a dedicated environment, advising the make system of the autoconf and automake tool revisions used for this initialization. And finally it instructed the make tool (&GNU; gmake in this case) to process the `Makefile.cvs` make file.

This make file was automatically set up when you created the Hello project. It contains all the commands necessary to properly initialize the project so the resulting application will run under &kde;. Especially this will create the `configure` skript file necessary to perform the next setup step.

#### Initial Hello Configuration

Configuring means to tailor the build process to the hardware and software peculiarities of your system. This is a basic requirement in build processes based on the &GNU; autotools scheme as you probably will know.

You can command a configure sequence once the basic automake initialization has been successfully finished because only after this initial run the necessary `configure` files will be available. This done, select the Build Run Configure menu entry to initiate a configuration sequence.

&kdevelop; opened the Messages tool view window again if necessary and listed the messages of the configure run therein. If all went right, the final messages will be `Good - your configure finished. Start make now` (which was issued by configure) followed by the &kdevelop; `*** Success ***` message.

On top of the Messages window you will again find the command line, &kdevelop; used to initiate this configuration run:

    mkdir '/home/devel/projects/hello/debug' && \
    cd '/home/devel/projects/hello/debug' && \
    CXXFLAGS="-O0 -g3" "/home/devel/projects/hello/configure" --enable-debug=full

You can tell several interesting details from these commands.

| First, &kdevelop; uses a dedicated subdirectory in the project directory tree for the build process. This `debug` build directory (shown to the left) mirrors the basic project structure and contains some set of build related files, such as several `configure` based files and additionally a `Makefile` in each subdirectory. In the Configuring the Project section shortly below we will have a brief look at the motivations why &kdevelop; uses separate build directories in cases like this one. For the moment it is enough to know that &kdevelop; created this `debug` directory — if necessary — prior to the configure call and that the `configure` script did build the sub structure and all the `Makefiles` in there. Next, from within the `debug` build directory, &kdevelop; called the `configure` script in the root directory of our project using a dedicated environment, where the `CXXFLAGS="-O0 -g3"` flags will later signal the &gcc; compiler that it should not optimize the resulting binaries and include full debugging information with them. Finally the `configure` script was called with the `--enable-debug=full` option which instructs it to create each `Makefile` so that later compilation and linking will have all necessary debugging information be built in and usable.

All these settings are configurable on a per project basis. You will learn more about this in the Project Management chapter.

#### Build the Project

Once you got this far you will be ready to actually build, &ie; compile and link the application. Looking at the Build menu, there are three such compile options from which to select.

&kdevelop; commands to build binaries.

Going from bottom to top, there are:

- Compile File — This will compile the source file in the currently open editor window. Mostly used for quick error checks.

- Build Active Target — This is mainly used in conjunction with the Automake Manager which we will briefly look at below.

- Build Project — Now this is what we currently are interested in. It will iterate over the whole project, compiling and linking all files as necessary.

It might be interesting to watch what happens to the `Debug` directory created in the former `configure` run. So best keep it open with all subdirectories unfolded just as shown above. Then select Build Build Project (or press the F8 key) to initiate the build sequence. As before, the Messages tool view window will open at the bottom and list the outcome of this build run. And additionally some files will appear on the `Debug` subtree.

There are not many source files in our Hello example project, so the Messages window will contain only a few lines. On top of them again find the command line &kdevelop; issued to the underlying shell.

    cd '/home/devel/projects/hello/debug' && \
    WANT_AUTOCONF_2_5="1" WANT_AUTOMAKE_1_6="1" gmake -k

Not very surprisingly, &kdevelop; switched to the `Debug` subtree root in order to run the `Makefile` located there. A dedicated sub-environment was set up again as before in the Initialization step in which then the gmake tool was called.

Note the `-k` option in the gmake call. It forces the build process to continue up to its very end, even if errors will occur. This makes sense as &kdevelop; will list all error messages in the Messages window. If there are any, use the virtues of an &IDE;: Just click on the error message in the Messages window and &kdevelop; will take you to exactly the position where the error occurred in the source file.

And what did happen inside the `Debug` subtree? Not very much. A few files showed up on the `doc/en` and `src` branches, most notably the `hello` file in `/home/devel/projects/hello/debug/src/`. This, finally, is the application binary we were looking for. All what is left to do in our initial project check is to run this `hello`.

#### Run the Application

There are no extra steps involved to run this new Hello application. Either select Build Execute Program or press Shift F9 or use the Execute program button on the Build Toolbar shown below.

Running an application form the Build Toolbar.

That was all. &kdevelop; will now start the new application in the dedicated console window which opens as Application tool view on the bottom. There the command &kdevelop; issued to execute the program will be shown in the top line:

    ./hello

showing that the &IDE; has a notion about where the executable it shall run resides. This notion can be widely configured. See more about this in the Project Management chapter.

The `./hello` line will most likely be followed by a warning message. Ignore this for now. It does not keep our Hello form running.

Our initial Hello application.

Close the Hello application window as usual. If no errors occurred, &kdevelop; will report this as `*** Exited normally ***` in the Application tool view window.

### Configuring the Project

In &kdevelop; there are numerous ways how you can manage your project. This behavior is configurable on a per-project basis and mostly of interest to the advanced developer. Yet there are a few project specific settings you should know of right from the beginning.

- Of what use are build configurations?
- Where to the define the behavior of the `configure` script.
- Some considerations how make should run.
- Where should the executable be and how should it be called?

#### Build Configurations

When we did a first run of the `configure` script in the Initial Hello Configuration section above, we noted that &kdevelop; had set up a dedicated `debug` subdirectory for this purpose. In this section we will briefly consider some consequences of this feature.

First of all, &kdevelop; does not necessarily use dedicated build directories apart from the source. The preparations to automatically use dedicated build configurations is done through templates the &appwizard; uses when creating a new project.

To find out which build configurations currently are available, have a look at the Project Build Configuration menu.

There are various build configurations available for this project.

In this case, like our Hello example project, there are three different build configurations available. In other cases, there may — initially — be only one such build configuration, namely default.

The currently used build configuration has a check mark left to it. In order to switch to another build configuration simply select its menu entry.

Now let us have a brief look at what these build configurations provide.

debug

- You should use this as the standard build configuration during the development process. The build occurs separately from the source directories in the dedicated `debug` subdirectory, &ie; all object, auxiliary, and executable files will be put in the subdirectories there instead of their counterparts in the project root. The `configure` script will be given the `--enable-debug=full` option and the `CXXFLAGS="-O0 -g3"` will signal the &gcc; compiler to not optimize the code and to insert extensive debug information into the resulting binaries.

optimized

- This is used to build a final C++ application. The build occurs separately from the source directories in the dedicated `optimized` subdirectory. No specific arguments to the `configure` script will be preset, yet the `CXXFLAGS="-O2 -g0"` will signal the &gcc; compiler to optimize the code and to not insert debug information into the resulting binaries.

default

- The term default denotes the standard setup when you build an application from the console using ⪚ the &GNU; configure and make/gmake command line oriented build tools. Other than debug or optimize no dedicated build directory will be used. The application will by default be built in the sources directories instead. There are no special configuration switches predefined. Building and running the application will use the default settings of the underlying tools (e.g. &gcc;, etc.).

  Think twice before you decide to use the default build environment!

  It cannot be used in parallel to the dedicated debug or optimized ones. Any build operation using default will render both of the other build environments unusable. This is caused by some peculiarities of the `Makefile` construction process using the automake/autoconf machinery, which cannot be easily overcome.

Now, why does one one want to use different build configurations at all, when they even appear to be not compatible to each other? The answer is — it simplifies edit-compile-debug cycles. The extra debug instructions inserted into the binaries as well as all those subtle structure changes to the program code made during optimizations will effect the run time behavior of the resulting application. So in many cases, when the logical structure of some routine appears to be correct, you may want to test whether it still behaves correctly under more practical conditions.

This is where the build configurations of &kdevelop; step in. Because the built object and executable files in each dedicated build directory and the build commands are kept separately from each other only source changes need to be handled when you switch between these build configurations.

Thus instead of cleaning up and recompile everything from scratch with alternate options, you need only switch from the debug to the optimize build configuration, have the source changes compiled in and then retest the application under these circumstances. If anything inappropriate shows up, simply switch back to debug and immediately continue your work there.

A final note — many build configuration settings are configurable. You can even define your own build configurations if your development process requires some. We will briefly look at these possibilities in the next section.

#### Project Configure Options

Configuring the application properly is vital in the &GNU; autotools building chain. This is usually guided by option definitions to the `configure` script and/or specific flags settings in the environment prior to running `configure` as ⪚ the `CXXFLAGS` in our previous discussions.

You may set most of the configuring options for a given project from within &kdevelop; &GUI;. Select Project Project Options and then from the icon bar on the left of the dialog the Configure Options icon. The Configure Options dialog featuring several tabbed windows will display on the right handed side.

Most configure options can be defined here.

As you see, there are quite a lot of options you can set up in this dialog. For now we will briefly look at only a few of them with regard to our Hello example project. For detailed instructions see the Configuring Projects chapter. If you want to know more about the meaning of the various flags which can be set, look up `info make` from the console (or `info:make` from within &konqueror;) and there the Implicit Rules Implicit Variables section.

There are several tabbed dialog setup windows from which the first one, General, refers to commonly used settings, while the others are rather compiler specific. In all cases, however, will the actual contents of those dialogs be governed by the given build configuration.

You select the build configuration whose configuration settings have to be defined from the Configuration combo box on top of the Configure Options dialog.

Select the build configuration whose settings to define.

Now select another build configuration from this combo box and note how the contents of ⪚ the Configure arguments and Build directory text boxes change according to the settings we mentioned in the build configurations list above.

##### General Configuration Settings

On the General dialog page, these configuration options can be defined:

- ##### Configure arguments

  These are the options &kdevelop; assigns to the `configure` script call in the build process. See the example in the Initial Hello Configuration section above.

- ##### Build directory

  This is the subdirectory in the current project root, where &kdevelop; will put all files created in the build process. Ideally, this should correspond to the name of the build configuration in use, but you are free to use any name you like, provided it is different from any other build configuration directory.

- ##### Top source directory

  You won't need this one often. It defaults to the project root directory and needs only be redefined if your project sources are located in another place.

- ##### C/C++ preprocessor flags (CPPFLAGS)

  Put specific instructions for the preprocessor here. &kdevelop; will use this to set up a temporary environment before it calls the actual build tool. Again, see the example in the Initial Hello Configuration section above how this is done.

- ##### Linker flags (LDFLAGS)

  This is extra information for the ld linker tool where it should look for additional libraries. It is used to build the temporary build environment as well.

- ##### Environment Variables

  Here you may define additional variables to be set up in the temporal build environment, &kdevelop; will set up before calling the respective build tool. Again, you must define these environment variables for every build configuration where they are to be used.

##### Compiler Specific Settings

The other tabs on the Configure Options dialog page are for compiler specific settings. They are similarly structured, so it suffices to have a brief look at the C++ page.

Select the compiler and its working environment &kdevelop; shall use here.

This is what you can set up from here:

- ##### C++ compiler

  Select the C++ compiler &kdevelop; should regularly use from this combo box. It however lists only those compilers &kdevelop; really knows of.

- ##### Compiler command (CXX)

  Only for experts. This is only needed if the C++ compiler is not standard. Put the name by which it is called here.

- ##### Compiler flags (CXXFLAGS)

  Here you can enter any extra option &kdevelop; shall pass (via the `Makefile`) to the compiler. Some option values will be preset according to the build configuration selected in the Configuration combo box.

  Note, that many common compiler options can be selected from a dialog which will pop up when you press the ... button to the right of the text box.

  Use this dialog to define the &GNU; C++ compiler behavior.

  We deliberately selected the Optimization tab here. Note how the No Optimization option has been preselected (according to the `-O0` option preset in the `debug` build configuration).

  Unfortunately you cannot currently select all options from this dialog. The `-g3` option ⪚ used by the `debug` build configuration would have to be altered manually if ever needed.

#### How Make Should Build the Program

You can as well configure the way &kdevelop; will call the make tool in the project build. Select Project Project Options and then the Make Options icon from the left dialog window side. The Make Options dialog page will then be displayed to the right.

Define how &kdevelop; will call the make tool.

There is not much to do here for now. The only setting of interest in most cases will be the Abort on first error switch. You will find it deactivated in most projects. This corresponds to the `-k` option in the gmake call we found in the initial build of our example Hello project.

This makes sense in an &IDE; like &kdevelop; which will protocol any error message during the build. After the build process you may easily navigate to any error message in the Messages tool window. Use View Next Error and View Previous Error or respectively the F4 and Shift F4 keys for this. &kdevelop; will automatically activate the editor window of the source file in question and put the cursor on the error line.

If on the other hand you rather want the build be stopped on whenever an error occurs, check the Abort on first error option in this dialog. &kdevelop; will then call gmake without the `-k` option.

#### How to Run the Executable

Once the build is complete, you can easily run the application from within &kdevelop;. Use either Build Execute Program, the Shift F9 keys, or the Execute program button in the Build Toolbar of &kdevelop;.

Run the program from here.

But where is the executable located which should be run? How does one have &kdevelop; append options to the call? Or, how can I have the application executed in a terminal by its own to test its console interactive behavior?

All this can be solved by configuring some project oriented run options in &kdevelop;. Select Project Project Options and then the Run Options icon from the icon bar on the left dialog window side. The Run Options dialog page will display to the right.

Define where and how your program shall be run.

Now, there is quite a lot which can be set up from this dialog. Basically there are four groups of configuration items.

- #### Directory

  This tells &kdevelop; where it basically shall assume the executable to be called. There are three possibilities you can select from.

  Note however that only root directories are defined here. &kdevelop; usually looks for the executable in some subdirectory given in the next configuration group.

  - Run from the directory, where the executable was build the last time. This is the default. You can keep this for now.

  - Run from the build directory according to the currently selected build configuration. The name of this directory was set up on the General Configuration dialog page.

    This is the root where &kdevelop; will find the executable. It changes automatically with the selection you made in Project Build Configurations menu. Try it.

    Other than always running the most recently built executable according to the setting above, this allows you to switch the program to be executed by simply selecting another build configuration from the Project menu.

  - Run the executable found in a fixed custom directory. Again this is the root only from where the actual executable is to be found.

    Use this if you ⪚ want to run the actually installed program instead of the version located in the project directories.

- #### Program

  This tells &kdevelop; the relative position and name of the program it shall actually call. This is relative to the root directory defined in the configuration group above. Furthermore you can define any argument &kdevelop; will pass to the program when it is actually called.

  If leave the Main program text box empty, the active target settings of the &automanag; will be used. Although this is an expert setting, inadvertently leaving this input field blank is a common cause of problems. Check this setting if &kdevelop; appears not to call the executable you wanted.

- #### Environment Variables

  &kdevelop; will set up a dedicated shell environment to run the program in. Define any extra environment variable in this configuration group.

- #### Miscellaneous

  Two more check boxes are located at the bottom of this dialog page.

  - Automatically compile before execution comes in handy most of time. &kdevelop; will check the project for changes and perform necessary configure and build steps for you any time you command it to run the program.

    Uncheck this in case you want to run the program version prior to the last change.

  - Start in external terminal is interesting if you want to test the input/output behavior of non-&GUI; programs in a console terminal. This is unchecked by default, so &kdevelop; does start the program in a window of its own without console terminal I/O capabilities.

## How to Extend a Project — the &automanag;

(- to be written -)

### A Short Look at the Automake Machinery

(- to be written -)

### How to Place Icons in a Separate Directory

(- to be written -)

### How to Add New Classes

(- to be written -)

Be careful when you select your class file names. It is extremely difficult to change them later.

### What is in a Subproject?

(- to be written -)

#### Concentrate on Your Work — the Active Target

(- to be written -)

### Some Steps to Restructure a Project

(- to be written -)

## How to Debug

(- to be written -)

## A Note on Your Project Documentation

The &kde; project uses docbook for generating your project handbook (&ie; the user manual). The user manual is available through your application menubar by choosing Help `YourApplication` Handbook when your &kde; GUI application is running. After building your project, the user manual is displayed in &kde; &khelpcenter;. It should explain to the user how your application works, what are the main features and how to configure it. It should also explain the advanced features if any.

All &kde; based templates in &kdevelop; have a doc subdir which contains a `index.docbook` template in the en folder to get you started in writing the user manual. You should edit this `index.docbook` in &kdevelop; and start changing personal details such as name, email, &etc;. Look at the comments in this file and try following these indications to start your application documentation. Rebuild your project to see the changes in &khelpcenter;.

You need to install your project using Build Install or Install (as root user) in &kdevelop; to see the user manual in &khelpcenter;.

You can find more about the docbook syntax on the &kde; documentation website.

## Last But Not Least, Keyboard Shortcuts

(- to be written -)

## Where to go from here

(- to be written -)

### Frequently Encountered Problems

- The nutshell chapter
- FAQ pages
- Forum
- Mailing lists

### Working With Projects

(- to be written -)

#### Using Existing &kdevelop; Projects

(- to be written -)

#### Importing External Projects

(- to be written -)