The KDE Frameworks

The KDE Frameworks build on the Qt framework, providing everything from simple utility classes (such as those in KCoreAddons) to integrated solutions for common requirements of desktop applications (such as KNewStuff, for fetching downloadable add-on content in an application, or the powerful KIO multi-protocol file access framework).

The KDE Frameworks can be used in CMake-based and QMake-based projects, and most of them are portable to at least Windows, Mac and Linux. The documentation of each framework has code snippets that show how to include the framework in a QMake or CMake project.

The frameworks are divided into four tiers, based on the kind of dependencies that they have. For instance, Tier 1 frameworks depend on Qt and possibly some third-party libraries, but not on other frameworks. This makes them easy to integrate into existing applications.

List of the libraries

Tier 1

Tier 1 frameworks depend only on Qt (and possibly a small number of other third-party libraries), so can easily be used by any Qt-based project.

Framework Maintainer Type
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Attica
Open Collaboration Services API 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
BluezQt
Qt wrapper for BlueZ 5 DBus API 		David Rosca integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
BreezeIcons
Breeze icon theme 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
ECM
Extra CMake modules 		Stephen Kelly functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KApiDox
Scripts and data for building API documentation (dox) in a standard format and style 		Jan Blackquill,
Carl Schwan 		functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KArchive
File compression 		David Faure functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCalendarCore
The KDE calendar access library 		Allen Winter functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCGroups
control cgroup resources through systemd dbus interface 		Henri Chain integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCodecs
Text encoding 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KConfig
Configuration system 		Matthew Dawson functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCoreAddons
Addons to QtCore 		Michael Pyne functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDBusAddons
Addons to QtDBus 		David Faure functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDNSSD
Abstraction to system DNSSD features 		Matthew Dawson integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KGuiAddons
Addons to QtGui 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KHolidays
Holiday calculation library 		Allen Winter functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KI18n
Advanced internationalization framework 		Chusslove Illich functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KIdleTime
Monitoring user activity 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Kirigami2
QtQuick plugins to build user interfaces based on the KDE human interface guidelines 		Marco Martin functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KItemModels
Models for Qt Model/View system 		David Faure functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KItemViews
Widget addons for Qt Model/View 		David Edmundson functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KPlotting
Lightweight plotting framework 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KQuickCharts
A QtQuick module providing high-performance charts. 		Arjen Hiemstra functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KSyntaxHighlighting
Syntax Highlighting 		Volker Krause functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KUserFeedback
User feedback framework 		Volker Krause solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KWayland
Qt-style API to interact with the wayland-client and wayland-server API 		Martin Flöser integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KWidgetsAddons
Addons to QtWidgets 		The KDE Community functional
Access to the windowing system The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
ModemManagerQt
Qt wrapper for ModemManager API 		Jan Grulich,
Lamarque Souza,
Lukáš Tinkl 		integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
NetworkManagerQt
Qt wrapper for NetworkManager API 		Jan Grulich,
Lamarque Souza,
Lukáš Tinkl 		integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Oxygen-icons
Oxygen icon theme 		Andreas Kainz functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Prison
Barcode abstraction layer providing uniform access to generation of barcodes 		The KDE Community solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
QQC2-Desktop-Style
QtQuickControls 2 style that integrates with the desktop 		Marco Martin functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Solid
Hardware integration and detection 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Sonnet
Support for spellchecking 		Martin Tobias Holmedahl Sandsmark solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
ThreadWeaver
High-level multithreading framework 		Mirko Boehm functional

Tier 2

Tier 2 frameworks additionally depend on tier 1 frameworks, but still have easily manageable dependencies.

Framework Maintainer Type
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KActivities
Runtime and library to organize the user work in separate activities 		Ivan Čukić solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KAuth
Abstraction to system policy and authentication features 		David Edmundson integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCompletion
Text completion helpers and widgets 		David Gil Oliva functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KContacts
Support for vCard contacts 		Laurent Montel functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCrash
Support for application crash analysis and bug report from apps 		David Faure integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDocTools
Documentation generation from docbook 		Luigi Toscano functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KFileMetaData
A file metadata and text extraction library 		Stefan Brüns integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KImageFormats
Image format plugins for Qt 		Alex Merry functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Kirigami-addons
Convergent visual components ("widgets") for Kirigami-based applications 		David Edmundson functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KJobWidgets
Widgets for tracking KJob instances 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KNotifications
Abstraction for system notifications 		Kai Uwe Broulik solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KPackage
Library to load and install packages of non binary files as they were a plugin 		Marco Martin functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KPeople
Provides access to all contacts and the people who hold them 		Aleix Pol Gonzalez functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KPty
Pty abstraction 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KUnitConversion
Support for unit conversion 		John Layt functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Syndication
An RSS/Atom parser library 		Frank Osterfeld functional

Tier 3

Tier 3 frameworks are generally more powerful, comprehensive packages, and consequently have more complex dependencies.

Framework Maintainer Type
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Baloo
Baloo is a file indexing and searching framework 		The KDE Community solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KActivitiesStats
A library for accessing the usage data collected by the activities system. 		Ivan Čukić solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KBookmarks
Support for bookmarks and the XBEL format 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KCMUtils
Utilities for working with KCModules 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KConfigWidgets
Widgets for configuration dialogs 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDAV
An DAV protocol implementation with KJobs 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDeclarative
Provides integration of QML and KDE Frameworks 		Marco Martin functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDED
Extensible deamon for providing system level services 		David Faure solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDESu
Integration with su for elevated privileges 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KEmoticons
Support for emoticons and emoticons themes 		The KDE Community functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KGlobalAccel
Add support for global workspace shortcuts 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KIconThemes
Support for icon themes 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KInit
Process launcher to speed up launching KDE applications 		David Faure solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KIO
Resource and network access abstraction 		David Faure solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KNewStuff
Support for downloading application assets from the network 		Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KNotifyConfig
Configuration system for KNotify 		David Edmundson integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KParts
Document centric plugin system 		David Faure solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KRunner
Parallelized query system 		Alexander Lohnau solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KService
Advanced plugin and service introspection 		David Faure solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KTextEditor
Advanced embeddable text editor 		Christoph Cullmann solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KTextWidgets
Advanced text editing widgets 		Laurent Montel functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KWallet
Secure and unified container for user passwords 		Valentin Rusu solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KXmlGui
User configurable main windows 		David Faure integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Plasma
Plugin based UI runtime used to write primary user interfaces 		Marco Martin solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Purpose
Offers available actions for a specific purpose 		Aleix Pol Gonzalez integration

Tier 4

Tier 4 frameworks can be mostly ignored by application programmers; this tier consists of plugins acting behind the scenes to provide additional functionality or platform integration to existing frameworks (including Qt).

Framework Maintainer Type
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
FrameworkIntegration
Workspace and cross-framework integration plugins 		Àlex Fiestas integration

Porting Aids

Porting Aids frameworks provide code and utilities to ease the transition from kdelibs 4 to KDE Frameworks 5. Code should aim to port away from this framework, new projects should avoid using these libraries.

Framework Maintainer Type
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDELibs4Support
Porting aid from KDELibs4 		The KDE Community solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDesignerPlugin
Tool to generate custom widget plugins for Qt Designer/Creator 		Alex Merry functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KDEWebKit
KDE Integration for QtWebKit 		The KDE Community integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KHtml
KHTML APIs 		Martin Tobias Holmedahl Sandsmark solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KJS
Support for JS scripting in applications 		Bernd Buschinski functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KJsEmbed
Embedded JS 		Bernd Buschinski functional
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KMediaPlayer
Plugin interface for media player features 		Alex Merry integration
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
Kross
Multi-language application scripting 		The KDE Community solution
Android FreeBSD Linux Windows iOS macOS
KXmlRpcClient
Interaction with XMLRPC services 		Daniel Vrátil functional