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 |
|---|---|---|
Open Collaboration Services API
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Qt wrapper for BlueZ 5 DBus API
|
David Rosca | integration |
|
Breeze icon theme
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Extra CMake modules
|
Stephen Kelly | functional |
|
Scripts and data for building API documentation (dox) in a standard format and style
|
Olivier Churlaud | functional |
|
File compression
|
David Faure | functional |
|
Text encoding
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Configuration system
|
Matthew Dawson | functional |
|
Addons to QtCore
|
Michael Pyne | functional |
|
Addons to QtDBus
|
David Faure | functional |
|
Abstraction to system DNSSD features
|
Matthew Dawson | integration |
|
Addons to QtGui
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Holiday calculation library
|
Felix Winter | functional |
|
Advanced internationalization framework
|
Chusslove Illich | functional |
|
Monitoring user activity
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
QtQuick plugins to build user interfaces based on the KDE UX guidelines
|
Marco Martin | functional |
|
Models for Qt Model/View system
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Widget addons for Qt Model/View
|
David Edmundson | functional |
|
Lightweight plotting framework
|
Christoph Feck | functional |
|
Syntax Highlighting
|
Volker Krause | functional |
|
User feedback framework
|
Volker Krause | solution |
|
Qt-style API to interact with the wayland-client and wayland-server API
|
Martin Flöser | integration |
|
Addons to QtWidgets
|
Christoph Feck | functional |
|
Access to the windowing system
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Qt wrapper for ModemManager API
|
Jan Grulich, Lamarque Souza, Lukáš Tinkl |
integration |
|
Qt wrapper for NetworkManager API
|
Jan Grulich, Lamarque Souza, Lukáš Tinkl |
integration |
|
Oxygen icon theme
|
Andreas Kainz | functional |
|
Barcode abstraction layer providing uniform access to generation of barcodes
|
The KDE Community | solution |
|
QtQuickControls 2 style that integrates with the desktop
|
Marco Martin | functional |
|
Hardware integration and detection
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Support for spellchecking
|
Martin Tobias Holmedahl Sandsmark | solution |
|
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 |
|---|---|---|
|
Runtime and library to organize the user work in separate activities
|
Ivan Čukić | solution |
|
Abstraction to system policy and authentication features
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Text completion helpers and widgets
|
David Gil Oliva | functional |
|
Support for application crash analysis and bug report from apps
|
David Faure | integration |
|
Documentation generation from docbook
|
Luigi Toscano | functional |
|
A file metadata and text extraction library
|
Matthieu Gallien | integration |
|
Image format plugins for Qt
|
Alex Merry | functional |
|
Widgets for tracking KJob instances
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Abstraction for system notifications
|
Martin Klapetek | solution |
|
Library to load and install packages of non binary files as they were a plugin
|
Marco Martin | functional |
|
Pty abstraction
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Support for unit conversion
|
John Layt | functional |
Tier 3
Tier 3 frameworks are generally more powerful, comprehensive packages, and consequently have more complex dependencies.
| Framework | Maintainer | Type |
|---|---|---|
|
Baloo is a file indexing and searching framework
|
Vishesh Handa | solution |
|
A library for accessing the usage data collected by the activities system.
|
Ivan Čukić | solution |
|
Support for bookmarks and the XBEL format
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Utilities for working with KCModules
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Widgets for configuration dialogs
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Provides integration of QML and KDE Frameworks
|
Marco Martin | functional |
|
Extensible deamon for providing system level services
|
David Faure | solution |
|
Integration of Frameworks widgets in Qt Designer/Creator
|
Alex Merry | functional |
|
Integration with su for elevated privileges
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
KDE Integration for QtWebKit
|
The KDE Community | integration |
|
Support for emoticons and emoticons themes
|
The KDE Community | functional |
|
Add support for global workspace shortcuts
|
Martin Flöser | integration |
|
Support for icon themes
|
Christoph Feck | integration |
|
Process launcher to speed up launching KDE applications
|
David Faure | solution |
|
Resource and network access abstraction
|
David Faure | solution |
|
Support for downloading application assets from the network
|
Jeremy Whiting | solution |
|
Configuration system for KNotify
|
David Edmundson | integration |
|
Document centric plugin system
|
David Faure | solution |
|
Provides access to all contacts and the people who hold them
|
Aleix Pol Gonzalez | functional |
|
Parallelized query system
|
Kai Uwe Broulik | solution |
|
Advanced plugin and service introspection
|
David Faure | solution |
|
Advanced embeddable text editor
|
Christoph Cullmann | solution |
|
Advanced text editing widgets
|
Laurent Montel | functional |
|
Secure and unified container for user passwords
|
Valentin Rusu | solution |
|
User configurable main windows
|
David Faure | integration |
|
Interaction with XMLRPC services
|
Daniel Vrátil | functional |
|
Plugin based UI runtime used to write primary user interfaces
|
Marco Martin | solution |
|
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 |
|---|---|---|
|
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 |
|---|---|---|
|
Porting aid from KDELibs4
|
The KDE Community | solution |
|
KHTML APIs
|
Martin Tobias Holmedahl Sandsmark | solution |
|
Support for JS scripting in applications
|
Bernd Buschinski | functional |
|
Embedded JS
|
Bernd Buschinski | functional |
|
Plugin interface for media player features
|
Alex Merry | integration |
|
Multi-language application scripting
|
The KDE Community | solution |