KDevelop is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE) for

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

computer

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It provides

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

, navigation and

debugging In engineering, debugging is the process of finding the Root cause analysis, root cause, workarounds, and possible fixes for bug (engineering), bugs. For software, debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, control flow analysis, Logf ...

features for several

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s, and integration with

build automation Build automation is the practice of building software systems in a relatively unattended fashion. The build is configured to run with minimized or no software developer interaction and without using a developer's personal computer. Build automati ...

and version-control systems, using a plugin-based architecture. KDevelop 5 has

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar by breaking it into parts. The term '' ...

backends for C, C++,

Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...

OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a software framework, framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), di ...

and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

/ QML, with plugins supporting PHP,

Python 3 The programming language Python (programming language), Python was conceived in the late 1980s, and its implementation was started in December 1989 by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, CWI in the Netherlands as a successor ...

and

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

. Basic

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that is used for programming language, programming, scripting language, scripting, or markup language, markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in differe ...

and

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...

are available for dozens of other source-code and markup formats, but without semantic analysis. KDevelop is part of the

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

project, and is based on

KDE Frameworks KDE Frameworks is a collection of Library (computing), libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt (software), Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality sol ...

and Qt. The C/C++ backend uses

Clang Clang () is a compiler front end for the programming languages C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, and the software frameworks OpenMP, OpenCL, RenderScript, CUDA, SYCL, and HIP. It acts as a drop-in replacement for the GNU Compiler ...

to provide accurate information even for very complex codebases.

History

KDevelop 0.1 was released in 1998, with 1.0 following in late 1999. 1.x and 2.x were developed over a period of four years from the original codebase. It is believed that Sandy Meier originated KDevelop. Ralf Nolden is also known to be an early developer of the project. In 1998 Sandy Meier started KDevelop and worked 8 weeks alone on this project. Since then, the KDevelop IDE is publicly available under the GPL and supports many programming languages. Bernd Gehrmann started a complete rewrite and announced KDevelop 3.x in March 2001. Its first release was together with K Desktop Environment 3.2 in February 2004, and development of KDevelop 3.x continued until 2008. KDevelop 4.x, another complete rewrite with a more object-oriented programming model, was developed from August 2005 and released as KDevelop 4.0.0 in May 2010. The last feature update of this branch was version 4.7.0 in September 2014, with bugfix releases continuing until KDevelop 4.7.4 in December 2016 KDevelop 5 development began in August 2014 as a continuation of the 4.x codebase, ported to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5. The custom C++ parser used in earlier versions, which had poor support for C++11 syntax, was replaced by a new Clang-based backend. The integrated CMakeFile interpreter was also removed in favour of

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

produced by the upstream CMake tool. Semantic language support was added for QML and JavaScript, using the parser from

Qt Creator Qt Creator is a cross-platform C++, JavaScript, Python and QML integrated development environment (IDE) which simplifies GUI application development. It is part of the SDK for the Qt GUI application development framework and uses the Q ...

, alongside a new QMake project-manager backend. The first stable 5.x release was KDevelop 5.0.0 in August 2016. In October 2016, official Microsoft Windows builds were released for the first time.

Features

KDevelop uses an embedded

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

component through the KParts framework. The default editor is KDE Advanced Text Editor, which can optionally be replaced with a Qt Designer-based editor. This list focuses on the features of KDevelop itself. For features specific to the editor component, see the article on

Kate Kate may refer to: People and fictional characters * Kate (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or nickname * Gyula Káté (born 1982), Hungarian amateur boxer * Lauren Kate (born 1981), American author o ...

. *

Source code editor A source-code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE). Features Source-code editor ...

with

and automatic

indentation __FORCETOC__ In the written form of many languages, indentation describes empty space ( white space) used before or around text to signify an important aspect of the text such as: * Beginning of a paragraph * Hierarchy subordinate concept * Qu ...

(Kate). * C/C++ language is now supported with a Clang's backend (as of KDevelop-5.0) * Project management for different project types, such as Automake, CMake, ''qmake'' for Qt based projects and

Ant Ants are Eusociality, eusocial insects of the Family (biology), family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the Taxonomy (biology), order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from Vespoidea, vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cre ...

for

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

based projects. * Class browser. * GUI designer * Front-end for the

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a collection of compilers from the GNU Project that support various programming languages, Computer architecture, hardware architectures, and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes ...

and

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Haskell, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and par ...

. * Wizards to generate and update

class Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...

definitions and application framework. * Automatic

code completion Code completion is an autocompletion feature in many integrated development environments (IDEs) that speeds up the process of coding applications by fixing common mistakes and suggesting lines of code. This usually happens through popups while typ ...

( C/ C++). * Built-in

Doxygen Doxygen ( ) is a documentation generator that works with many programming languages. It extracts information from specially-formatted source code comments and saves the information in one of various supported formats. Doxygen supports static ...

support. *

Revision control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code ...

(also known as SCM) support. Supported systems include CVS,

Subversion Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the established social order and its structures of Power (philosophy), power, authority, tradition, h ...

, Perforce, ClearCase,

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

, Mercurial, and

Bazaar A bazaar or souk is a marketplace consisting of multiple small Market stall, stalls or shops, especially in the Middle East, the Balkans, Central Asia, North Africa and South Asia. They are traditionally located in vaulted or covered streets th ...

KDevelop 4 is a completely plugin-based architecture. When a developer makes a change, they only must compile the plugin. There is a possibility to keep several profiles each of which determines which plugins to be loaded. KDevelop does not come with a text editor, but instead uses a plugin for this purpose as well. KDevelop is programming language independent and build system-independent, supporting

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

, and many other technologies such as Qt,

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

, and

wxWidgets wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit and tools library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with no s ...

. KDevelop has supported a variety of

s, including C, C++, Python, PHP,

, Fortran,

, Ada, Pascal,

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

, and Bash scripting. Supported build systems include GNU (automake), cmake, qmake, and make for custom projects (KDevelop does not destroy user

Makefile In software development, Make is a command-line interface software tool that performs actions ordered by configured Dependence analysis, dependencies as defined in a configuration file called a ''makefile''. It is commonly used for build automati ...

s if they are used) and scripting projects which don't need one. ''Code completion'' is available for C and C++. Symbols are kept in a Berkeley DB file for quick lookups without re-parsing. KDevelop also offers a developer framework which helps to write new parsers for other programming languages. An integrated

debugger A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display ...

allows graphically doing all debugging with

breakpoint In software development, a breakpoint is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a computer program, program, put in place for debugging purposes. It is also sometimes simply referred to as a pause. More generally, a breakpoint is a means o ...

s and backtraces. It even works with dynamically loaded plugins unlike

command line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

GDB. ''Quick Open'' allows quick navigation between files. Currently, around 50 to 100 plugins exist for this IDE. Major ones include persistent project-wide code bookmarks, ''Code abbreviations'' which allow expanding text quickly, a ''Source formatter'' which reformats code to a ''style guide'' before saving, ''Regular expressions search'', and project-wide ''search/replace'' which helps in

refactoring In computer programming and software design, code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing source code—changing the '' factoring''—without changing its external behavior. Refactoring is intended to improve the design, structure, ...

code.

History

Features

See also

References

External links