Prerequisites

Before you actually build the KDE development environment from source, think -- do you need to do this? Yes, if you will be working on the KDE SC core. You will not need the entire environment built from source if you intend to work on one application. We recommend confirming whether you need to build the environment by posting a question on the mailing list or chatting up on the IRC.

Assuming you need to build KDE from source, you will need to set up your build environment and install packages that contain header files used during the compilation of the KDE platform sources.

Setting up the Environment

In order to set up the KDE platform build environment, you need to create a file defining environment variables and other settings by following the instructions at:

http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/Environment#Environment_Configuration

Save the file in the root directory for your build environment with the name .build-config. If you need separate build environments--such as one for stable releases and one for nightly builds--it is recommended that you create a separate script for each build environment and leave it in the environment's root directory.

Build Requirements 

This section details the software requirements you must install on your system before you can start building the KDE platform. For most of these requirements, it is best to use the packages provided by your operating system distribution, but in some cases you will need to build these requirements yourself.

Debian/Ubuntu

Minimum build dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu for KDE 4.6  and above are as follows:  

sudo apt-get install graphviz libxml2-utils libopenexr-dev libjasper-dev libenchant-dev \
libavahi-common-dev libaspell-dev libasound2-dev libldap2-dev libsasl2-dev \
libsmbclient-dev libxkbfile-dev libxcb1-dev libxklavier-dev libxdamage-dev \
libxcomposite-dev libbluetooth-dev libusb-dev network-manager-dev \
libsensors4-dev libnm-util-dev libcfitsio3-dev libnova-dev libeigen2-dev \
libopenbabel-dev libfacile-ocaml-dev libboost-python-dev libsvn-dev libsvncpp-dev \
libqt4-dev libqca2-dev libstreamanalyzer-dev libstrigiqtdbusclient-dev \
libcommoncpp2-dev libidn11 libidn11-dev libpci-dev libxss-dev libxft-dev \
libpolkit-agent-1-dev libpolkit-backend-1-dev libpolkit-gobject-1-dev git libpoppler-qt4-dev \ 
libspectre-dev 

 Extra and optional packages for Debian/Ubuntu can be found at:

http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/Distributions/Debian

openSUSE

Minimum build depends for openSUSE are as follows:

 yast -i alsa-devel automoc4 avahi-devel patch cups-devel kde4-filesystem \ libbz2-devel avahi-compat-mDNSResponder-devel hal-devel xorg-x11-devel \ libQtWebKit-devel libxml2-devel kdesdk4 clucene-core-devel boost-devel \ libjpeg-devel liblrdf-devel libpng-devel libxslt-devel libredland-devel \ Mesa-devel giflib-devel subversion gcc-c++ gmp-devel xine-devel \ libgpgme-devel pcre-devel dbus-1-devel libqt4-devel cmake git \  doxygen polkit-devel docbook-xsl-stylesheets cyrus-sasl-devel libical-devel 

Extra and optional packages for openSUSE can be found at:

http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/Distributions/openSUSE 

Other distributions

Please refer to http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/Distributions