On Thursday 23 of October 2025 09:25:44 Jan Stolarek via tde-devels wrote:
Dear TDE devs,
I would like to try my luck (and skills!) with fixing some of the bugs I've been experiencing with TDE. I need help with making my first steps though. I already have the TDE sources cloned from git repositories. Now I need help with the build process. Ideally, I would like to be able to build a Debian package on a VM dedicated to development, and then install and test that package on my primary desktop machine.
I found build instructions on the wiki, but I don't know to what extent these are up-to-date:
https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/How_to_Build_TDE_Core_Modules
I am confused about the Suggested Build Order section. Do I need to find each of the mentioned components and build it in the listed order? How do I build each of the components? Should I follow with the incantation in "Performing a cmake Build with Ninja" section for each of the components? How to rebuild if dependencies change? If I modify, say, dbus-tqt, do I need to manually rebuild everything that's listed below it in the dependency list? Lastly, once a certain component or application is built, how do I package it?
I have no doubt, that the build instructions on the Wiki make a lot of sense for someone who already knows how to build TDE, but for a beginner they feel slightly incomplete. If anyone has the patience to guide me with my baby steps I will greatly apprciate it.
Best regards, Janek ____________________________________________________
Hi Janek
a simple way to rebuild a package with some added patch can be as follows - for example for tdebase:
1. Set up apt sources for both binary and source Trinity packages. 2. apt source tdebase-trinity && apt build-dep -y tdebase-trinity && cd tdebase*/ 3. Add required patches to debian/patches and list them in debian/patches/series. 4. Use quilt push -a to verify that all patches can be applied smoothly. 5. Edit debian/changelog to distinguish the package version from the original. 6. dpkg-buildpackage -j<cpu_count> -b 2>&1 | tee ../build.log
If the build goes correctly, you will find the binary packages and can install them. If not, you can find in the build.log why it failed.
Cheers Slávek --