The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce a better solution to upgrading KDE, one that will allow a user to get his/her hands on a release the night it hits the mirrors, without having to overwrite the base OS install. Konstruct compiles KDE into a new desktop rather than using RPM or DEB.
Konstructing a New KDE Desktop
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Has anyone tried to use this utility? Any luck with it?
Its based on GARNOME, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.
I’ve tried installing kde both the konstruct way and the apt way, and the apt way is definitely easier and faster. Everything gets installed where your distribution likes things installed (so you don’t have to mess around with your PATH), you have to download far less stuff, you don’t have to wait a full day for compilation, and you don’t have to monitor the kde site for updates. http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/
(Obligatory) Because gentoo handles multiple KDE versions better than any other distro I have seen, and I have been using KDE with multiple versions (The reason I needed it was 2.x betas were, shall we say initially a pain
) RPM and DEB simply were not intended for multiple versions of a particular package.
Portage (Gentoo’s package management system) has a concept of slots, which allow multiple versions (though the way it’s set up, not bug-fix versions eg: 3.2.0 3.2.1 3.2.2 all go to the same slot, whereas 3.1.4 would not, and if you really want to, you can edit the ebuild and put the 3.2.0 … 3.2.2 into seperate slots (but that seems to be to be a waste))
Now, the kicker: It even handles CVS versions fine (pulls from cvs when you build it, so it’s as current as when you emerge it. Though only one version of CVS HEAD can be installed at one time) http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/kde/kde-cvs.xml
Essentially konstruct is similar, but destroys one of Linux’s best strengths: package management that is (in my experence) unrivaled by any other OS. If construct added in the ability to package for rpm or deb, it would be much better.
(/obligatory)
“….It takes the process of building from source to a whole new level by making it…simple!”
You call that simple? YIKES! Me be sticking to me ‘apt.’
***SIGH***
He says it simplifies the process of building from source. He said nothing about it being more simple than apt.
I prefer to just add the SUSE yast-source to YAST and update through YAST.
package management that is (in my experence) unrivaled by any other OS
I’ve had no problems with package manegement on Solaris either with Sun’s packages or any of the third part ones from places like http://www.sunfreeware.com. In fact, I’ve only ever encountered one operating system that has enough software to require package management and still messes it up.
Why shouldn’t it work? I only collates the required compilation steps. That it introduces new faults is unlikely, if you encounter an error then it’s likely one where you have to search the cause in the source tarballs or missing installed dependencies.
I think you should give more credit to GAR than GARNOME.
Be happy if binary packages of KDE releases (including Alpha/Beta/RCs) exist for your specific distribution everytime and immediately.
Konstruct is pretty cool, but I’m happy waiting for Slackware-current to get the latest kde binaries so I can grab them with Swaret.
It’s a good effort for someone to try and find a solution to easing the update process for all distros. I still prefer using SuSE’s Yast Online Update. I can click update to any KDE packages (programs) I have installed and update the desktop in one shot. All dependencies are auto-checked through YAST so it ensures stability. You can even set SuSE to Auto-Update as soon as updates are available which is similar to Windows XP. SuSE Watcher also lets me know if there are any new updates for packages as soon as they become available.
I haven’t tried this tutorial yet, but the doc material up to this point on Konstruct has been slim (to say the least). I tried a couple of times to download KDE 3.2.1, but it just would crap-out.
If it works half as well as they describe, I look forward to trying it.
emerge kde
I doubt it.
Those of you that use Gentoo that want to compile KDE about 20-50% faster might want to try this:
myconf=”–enable-final –enable-fast-malloc=fast –disable-debug” emerge kde
Egads, you forgot about -fno-assert.
<p>Unless KDE doesn’t use assert calls, but I highly doubt it.
I tried to build KDe 3.2 when it was in the beta stage using Konstruct on my debian system with no luck whatsoever. Kept balking at a path to QT, which of course was installed along with the development libs on my machine. I didn’t feel like mucking around with setting paths and other variable when I could just update my source.list file to pull from the CVS-Head. Apt is much easier than konstruct, though comparing source to binaries is apples to organes I suppose. The only easy source compilier I’ve run across is fink on OSX
Konstruct is bloody awesome. When I want the latest KDE it’s just cd meta/kde;make install. Then all that is left is to add a few paths to your .bashrc (hardly rocket science!). Just a fantastic way to get the latest KDE really, and one I try and promote whenever I can.
I prefer installing the latest release of KDE using the FreeBSD ports. If you’re using Slackware Linux, you won’t have to wait as Patrick updates the KDE packages soon after a new release is out.
Hi,
it worked for me perfectly on Mandrake 9.2 .
Karsten
Konstruct/GARNOME are for sure not designated competitors to *BSD’s ports or Gentoo portage system.