90 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
90 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Kate on all Platforms - 2024"
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date: 2024-04-14T19:25:00+02:00
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draft: false
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categories: [kde]
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tags: [kde]
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url: /posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/
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author: "Christoph Cullmann"
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---
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## Unix like systems with X11 or Wayland
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All [Unix like systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix) with either [X11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System) or [Wayland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)) are well supported since ever.
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Linux with X11 and now Wayland is for a long time the primary system on that Kate work happens.
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Over the years it was, like most of the [KDE applications](https://apps.kde.org/), ported to various [BSD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution) variants.
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Be it some mainstream Linux distribution like [Fedora](https://fedoraproject.org/) or a niche one like [NixOS](http://nixos.org), Kate is available as binary package.
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You love BSD?
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From [FreeBSD](https://freebsd.org) to [OpenBSD](https://openbsd.org), you can get a Kate package via your normal package system.
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And in the normal case, you can just build it from source on your own, all needed patches should be in our repositories upstream.
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If that is not the case for your system, please help to upstream them.
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Below the current state of the master branch compiled on NixOS unstable with Wayland.
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<center><a href="/posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/images/2024-kate-linux-wayland.png" target="_blank"><img width=700 src="/posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/images/2024-kate-linux-wayland-small.png"></a></center>
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How to compile Kate on your own on a Unix like system and start to help to develop it can be found out [here](https://kate-editor.org/build-it/).
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## Windows
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Since several years there are activities in the KDE community to provide our libraries and applications for [Windows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows).
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Even if that is a non-free platform, we can reach out to new users and developers that might later be then even interested to switch a full open platform.
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Progress is slow, but steady.
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We have Kate and some other applications in the official [Windows Store](https://apps.microsoft.com/search/publisher?name=KDE+e.V.) and nightly build for more of them.
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With reasonable effort you can develop Kate on Windows with [Craft](https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development/Windows).
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Below the current state of the master branch running on Windows 11 inside VirtualBox.
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<center><a href="/posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/images/2024-kate-windows.png" target="_blank"><img width=700 src="/posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/images/2024-kate-windows-small.png"></a></center>
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If you like to try that, use the nighly installer linked on the [Kate website](https://kate-editor.org/get-it/).
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## macOS
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Beside Windows, the major other non-free platform Kate tries to support is [macOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS).
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We have nighly build available for that and you can, like on Windows, develop Kate with the help of [Craft](https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development/Mac).
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Below the current state of the master branch running native on my M2 ARM Mac Mini.
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<center><a href="/posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/images/2024-kate-macos.png" target="_blank"><img width=700 src="/posts/kate-on-all-platforms-2024/images/2024-kate-macos-small.png"></a></center>
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Same as for Windows, if you like to try that, use the nighly installer for either ARM or Intel Macs linked on the [Kate website](https://kate-editor.org/get-it/).
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## Other Platforms
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Naturally there are more than the above mentioned operating systems around.
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Beside the mobile ones like [Android](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)) and [iOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS) that are not that interesting for Kate, many other desktop operating systems exist.
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Even if the Kate team itself doesn't put active work it them, that doesn't mean Kate can't run there.
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Without any active work on our side, for example a Kate port for [Haiku](https://www.haiku-os.org/) was done.
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Some one-liner patches for that got even upstreamed.
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If you work on some port of our stuff and need to upstream stuff, please contact us.
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Even if you work on a non-mainstream system, as long as the patches are not too intrusive, we are interested to have them.
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## Help us!
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Naturally the most of our developers are working on the Linux or some BSD.
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That means the other systems are always in need of more people to help out, both on the programming and testing side.
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For Kate, testing should be easy, grab a nighly build for Windows or macOS on the [Kate website](https://kate-editor.org/get-it/).
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Or even better, get [Craft](https://community.kde.org/Craft) running, that will make it easier to contribute, too.
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One recent topic that needs love is the removal of [DBus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Bus) for Windows/macOS/Android and other systems that don't use it normally.
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If you are up to help with that, [here](https://invent.kde.org/packaging/craft-blueprints-kde/-/issues/17) that is coordinated.
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The current state is already sufficient that the nightly builds of Kate no longer hang on e.g. macOS, but still some frameworks like KIO will need more work.
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Just don't get that wrong, DBus is great on the Linux or BSD systems that use it natively, but it is a pain on systems that have no notion of DBus and leads there to hangs or the spawning of unwanted processes.
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Beside that, the usefulness is low there, as there are no services on the bus to communicate with anyways.
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