KDE package guidelines

The KDE packages on Arch Linux follow a certain schema.

Build dir

A good way of building CMake packages is to make a build directory outside the root of the project and run cmake from that dir. So, the build function in the PKGBUILD should start with the following lines:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../${pkgname}-${pkgver}

Install prefix

Every packages must set the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable, but also we have to respect custom built versions of KDE, so please use:

-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`

When a package is moved to [extra] or [community] that line must be changed to:

-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr

Build type

Please specify the build type; this makes it really simple to rebuild a package with debug symbols by just using a sed rule.

-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Package naming

Plasmoids

Plasmoids packages should be named kdeplasma-applets-plasmoidname so that they are recognizable as KDE-related packages; this also distinguishes them from the official packages.

Runners

Plasma runners packages should be named kdeplasma-runners-runnername so that they are recognizable as KDE-related packages; this also distinguishes them from the official packages.

Service Menus

Service menus packages should be named kde-servicemenus-servicename so that they are recognizable as KDE-related packages

Themes

Plasma themes packages should be named kdeplasma-themes-themename so that they are recognizable as KDE-related packages.

.install files

For many KDE packages, all .install files look almost exactly the same. Some packages install icons in the hicolor icon theme; use the xdg-icon-resource utility provided by the xdg-utils package, which is a dependency of the qt package. So use this line:

xdg-icon-resource forceupdate --theme hicolor &> /dev/null

Many packages install Freedesktop.org compatible .desktop files and register MimeType entries in them. Running update-desktop-database in post_install is recommended as that tool is provided by the desktop-file-utils package which is a dependency of the qt package. So use this line:

update-desktop-database -q