How to add application templates to the application wizard part
Project templates provide the developer with a basic application framework. This is necessary for rapid application development (RAD) and makes it even possible for an inexperienced 3rd party developer to create standard conforming applications like kedit as well as plugins for example for kdevelop or noatun.I. Example: How To Create a Simple KDE Application Template "KHello"
II. Registration/Installation Of The Application Template
III. How To Add The Template To KDevelop CVS HEAD
I. Example: How To Create a Simple KDE Application Template "KHello"
You can find this template in$KDEDIR/share/apps/kdevappwizard/template-khello
.I.1. Step 1: Basic Skeleton
Create a directorytemplate-khello
with the files
- template-khello/app.cpp
- template-khello/app.h
- template-khello/app.desktop
- template-khello/app.kdevelop
- template-khello/appui.rc
- template-khello/khello
- template-khello/main.cpp
- template-khello/preview.png
- template-khello/script
- template-khello/src-Makefile.am
- template-khello/subdirs
- Note:
- The directory name must begin with
"template-"
.
I.2. Step 2: The Files in Detail
Have a look into the files! There are some variables which the application wizard will replace:
- $AUTHOR$ ...... by the author
- $EMAIL$ ....... by the e-mail address
- $VERSION$ ..... by the version
- $APPNAME$ ..... by the project name (KHello)
- $APPNAMELC$ ... by the project name in lowercase (khello)
- $APPNAMEUC$ ... by the project name in uppercase (KHELLO)
- $LICENSE$ ..... by the license (GPL, BSD, QPL, LGPL, ...)
- $LICENSEFILE$ . by the licensefile
- $YEAR$ ........ by the year
All this can be found in $KDEDIR/share/apps/kdevappwizard/template-common/kdevelop.pm
. I.2.1. The Source Files
The filestemplate-khello/app.cpp, template-khello/app.h
and template-khello/main.cpp
contain the source code that should not be too special so that the user can implement his own ideas.(There may be variables included - see Step 2: The Files in Detail).
I.2.2. The File template-khello/khello
It may look like this:The application wizard looks into this file to get
- the information where to integrate the plugin into the the listview (
Category=
) - the name (
Name=
) and the comment (Comment=
) - the preview image (
Icon=
) - and the file templates the project uses (
FileTemplates=
).
Comment=
a small comment for the template. Longer comments should go into a README.devel and shown on startupShowFilesAfterGeneration=
a comma-separated list (without whitespaces) of files that should be opened immediately after the generation, for instance a README.devel or a source file the user has to modify, the path is relative to the project directory (example:ShowFilesAfterGeneration=src/main.cpp,src/plugin.cpp
). AndAPPNAMEUC
will be replaced with the projectname in uppercase,APPNAMELC
will be replaced with the projectname in lowercase,APPNAME
will be replaced with the projectname.
DefaultDestinatonDir
changes the default destination dir for the project (~) to your value, whereasHOMEDIR
is a keyword
- Attention:
- The file
template-khello/khello
must have the same name as the right half of the directory! If the directory istemplate-foobar
the file must betemplate-foobar/foobar
.
- See also:
- AppWizardPart for more information.
I.2.3. Some Additional Files
The filetemplate-khello/appui.rc
contains information about the toolbar and the menu.template-khello/preview.png
will be shown in the aplication wizard.template-khello/app.desktop
describes the application.template-khello/subdirs
contains a list of the subdirectories (usuallydoc, po, src
) and can be found in the project root directory. It is necessary for the autotools.
I.2.4. The File template-khello/src-Makefile.am
This file will be copied to the$PROJECTDIR/src/
. # set the include path for X, qt and KDE INCLUDES = $(all_includes) # these are the headers for your project noinst_HEADERS = %{APPNAMELC}.h # let automoc handle all of the meta source files (moc) METASOURCES = AUTO messages: rc.cpp $(XGETTEXT) *.cpp -o $(podir)/%{APPNAMELC}.pot KDE_ICON = %{APPNAMELC} ######################################################################### # APPLICATION SECTION ######################################################################### # this is the program that gets installed. it's name is used for all # of the other Makefile.am variables bin_PROGRAMS = %{APPNAMELC} # the application source, library search path, and link libraries %{APPNAMELC}_SOURCES = main.cpp %{APPNAMELC}.cpp %{APPNAMELC}_LDFLAGS = $(KDE_RPATH) $(all_libraries) %{APPNAMELC}_LDADD = $(LIB_KDEUI) # this is where the desktop file will go shelldesktopdir = $(kde_appsdir)/Utilities shelldesktop_DATA = %{APPNAMELC}.desktop # this is where the shell's XML-GUI resource file goes shellrcdir = $(kde_datadir)/%{APPNAMELC} shellrc_DATA = %{APPNAMELC}ui.rc
I.2.5. The File template-khello/script
The following script is used to install the template and replaces all variables by the corresponding value. The result is a hopefully working kdevelop project!- Note:
- There are several application templates which use some identical files - that's why some files are taken from the
"template-common"
-directory.
II. Registration/Installation Of The Application Template
The easiest way to install your template is to provide an "install.sh" shell script.Example:
#!/bin/sh kde_prefix=`kde-config --prefix` if [ `id -u` = 0 ]; then # we are root so install the template into the global kde directory kde_dir=`kde-config --prefix` else # we are a user so install it into $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kdevappwizard directory kde_dir=`kde-config --localprefix` echo "Note: It would be better to install as root. Press CTRL+C to abort" fi # use usual path or another one? echo "Install dir [${kde_dir}/share/apps/kdevappwizard]:" read newdir if [ "$newdir"a = a ]; then newdir="${kde_dir}/share/apps/kdevappwizard/"; fi # make sure the directories exist if [ ! -e "${newdir}/template-khello" ]; then mkdir -p "${newdir}/template-khello" ; fi; if [ ! -e "${newdir}/templates" ]; then mkdir -p "${newdir}/templates" ; fi; if [ ! -e "${newdir}" ]; then mkdir -p "$newdir" ; fi; if [ ! -e "${newdir}/template-common" ]; then ln -s "${kde_prefix}/share/apps/kdevappwizard/template-common" "${newdir}/template-common" ; fi; # install now cp -R --target-directory "$newdir" template-khello # the file template-khello/khello must go to the "templates" directory that # kdevelop knows that it exists mv "$newdir/template-khello/khello" "$newdir/templates/" echo "done"
- Attention:
- Please test your template whether it installs and behaves correctly! Test, test and test again! ;)
III. How To Add The Template To KDevelop CVS HEAD
This section is for kdevelop developers only. Most probably you don't have to read this!.Move the directory
"template-khello"
to kdevelop/languages/cpp/app_templates/
and then add the following files in kdevelop/languages/cpp/app_templates/template-khello/
(in this example the language is c++ if you use other language replace cpp with the language name):".kdev_ignore"
is an empty file. It prevents KDevelop's C++-parser from parsing the C++ template files. This is necessary because the template files are just code templates and not real code (yet).".cvsignore"
looks like this:Makefile Makefile.in script.local
"Makefile.am"
looks like this:# all khello data files dataFiles = src-Makefile.am app.cpp app.h main.cpp appui.rc app.kdevelop \ subdirs app.desktop khello.png templateName = khello ### no need to change below: template_DATA = $(templateName).kdevtemplate templatedir = ${appwizarddatadir}/templates appwizarddatadir = ${kde_datadir}/kdevappwizard $(templateName).tar.gz: $(TAR) -cf $(templateName).tar -C $(srcdir) ${dataFiles} $(GZIP) -9 $(templateName).tar archivedir = ${appwizarddatadir} archive_DATA = $(templateName).tar.gz ${templateName}.png CLEANFILES = *.tar.gz
"template-khello"
to "SUBDIRS = " in kdevelop/languages/cpp/app_templates/Makefile.am
.- Attention:
- Please test your template whether it installs and behaves correctly! Test, test and test again! It works? Well - now talk to the kdevelop guys so that they know what's going on and probably you may commit. ;)