KonsoleDevelopment

General Information

Anyone can help if they have the time. There is no requirements to know programming languages or install special software. If you are running KDE, you can help. It will be more helpful if you can run the latest KDE versions. This is often in distribution's "unstable" or "bleeding-edge" repositories. Also, installing KDE with debugging symbols will help with crashes, although your system will be much slower.

For some of the categories below, you don't need the KDE source installed on your system.

Check out the general KDE contribute page.

• KDE versions: It would be best to have KDE 4.6.x installed. You can use KDE 4.5.4; however, KDE 4.4.x is too old and has too many bugs that have been fixed.

• Git: In Feb, 2011, konsole now has its own repository. It is now much easier to download and look at the code.

To keep up with bug reports and general info join the Konsole mailing list. You can reach me at kurt dot hindenburg at gmail.com, as well as on IRC #kde-devel as khindenburg.

Bug Reports

• Confirm bug reports - search for unconfirmed bugs and test them on your system. If you can reproduce a bug, mark it as 'New'(if you have a account with enough permission on bugs.kde.org) and/or leave a comment with your findings.

• Find duplicate reports - search all of Konsole's bugs and wishlist reports for duplicates. If you find a possible duplicate, leave a comment on the bug such as "possible duplicate of bug #####'.

• Narrow down the steps required to reproduce a bug or crash - Often times, the bug reporter may not fully explain or understand how they got the bug or crash. It is extremely helpful when tracking down issues if there is a step by step process which triggers the issue everytime. If you can reproduce the issue repeatedly, comment on the bug report with the exact steps required to trigger it.

Handbook

• Verify the menus and their shortcuts are valid.
• Verify all the other information is valid.
• Read through it for areas that need clarified or expanded on.

Userbase Site

• Verify the Konsole site has the correct info.
• Expanding the site with more tips and documentation.

Coding

• There are a multitude of ways to start coding. You'll need to be able to compile KDE. Getting started is a good place to start. You don't need to have both KDE 4.6 and trunk installed. If you are currently running the latest KDE 4.6.x, you should be able to checkout Konsole and get it to compile. I highly suggest using kdesrc-build to download and compile the KDE source files. Regardless if you are using KDE 4.6 or trunk, any type of patch can be attached to a bug report, sent to git.reviewboard.kde.org or the Konsole mailing-list.

Since 4.6, Konsole has its own git repository [1]. From there, you can view the branches and latest commits.

• Once you can build Konsole, find some area you are interested in and try to work on it.

• • Wishlists - A very long list of features users have asked for

• • Junior Jobs - Some 'easy' reports to work on.

• • Bugs - Reports of things wrong and need fixed

• Notes
  • Before spending a lot of time working on a bug or feature, please send an email to the Konsole mailing list and/or comment on the bug report that you are working on it.
  • New features and such things as string changes can only go into trunk (master), not to point releases (eg 4.6.2).

Questions?

Feel free to let me know of any questions or any suggestions on how to make this page better.