Those familiar with running development versions of KDE software are familiar with the idea of having to sometimes remove their whole development install directory and start all over
in order to resolve some types of build errors.
That advice has always seemed to me to be overly mysterious, even if occasionally effective. It’s just as logical as the old saw about rebooting your computer; it often works, but why?
I got to re-examine that question today when resolving a build error on my infrequently-updated KF5 install, a build error that could have been fixed by removing the install directory and re-building everything. Only this time, I can explain why.
In short, the issue relates to the movement of a framework class from one framework module to a different one (a not-uncommon circumstance when working on a new major version of a software release).
Not too long ago, the trusty old KPluginLoader module occupied a spot within the KService framework, which was responsible for installing the needed includes, libraries, etc. for application developers (and other Frameworks) to use KPluginLoader.
However, as part of our ongoing code and API cleanups, we decided to move KPluginLoader and its associated classes to a more generic Framework module (KCoreAddons). This move was performed back in March and was designed to maintain source compatibility with code that used a KService class to construct KPluginLoader.
To do this, an intermediate class, KPluginName, was created to link KService with KPluginLoader (instead of using QString directly as an implicit conversion, which could easily become disastrous). What this means is that all code using the KService class would now depend on the new KPluginName class, which is bundled with KPluginLoader (all of which was moved to KCoreAddons).
That describes the theory. Nor is the reality far off, unless you are like me and simply install updated modules to a set install path without deleting the install directory first every time.
With that construct, what happens to application code using KService is that there are 2 possible kpluginloader.h files that might be found: The new one from KCoreAddons, and the old one from KService leftover in the install directory. If CMake finds the old one in the KService include directory, there won’t be a KPluginName
class, which means any applications using KService itself will fail to compile at kservice.h (which needs KPluginName, and properly #includes kpluginloader.h to load it).
This is the exact kind of error that deleting your install directory
first helps to overcome. So let me remind my fellow developers and testers, if you get weird build errors (especially for software in flux like KF5 is), don’t forget to try removing your install directory when you’re troubleshooting. It takes more time, sure, but there’s a reason that distribution package managers uninstall old versions of software before installing updated versions.