Compiling Marble

This page describes how to build and install Marble

To obtain pre-built packages of Marble for your favourite operating system, please have a look at our Download section.

You might be able to obtain a more recent version of this document here

NOTE: This file describes how to build Marble as a stand-alone
      application.  If you are building Marble as part of the KDE-EDU
      module, then you should instead read the file INSTALL in the top
      level directory of this module and ignore this one.  This is
      most likely ../INSTALL.

Prerequisites for building Marble are:

• Qt 4.5 or newer
• cmake version 2.6 or newer
• (optional): kdelibs from the KDE subversion repositories. We have found that revision 1004263 (Marble v.0.8.0) as part of the KDE 4.3 branch works fine. Note that kdelibs is under heavy development, and some revisions might not work.

And of course you need the Marble source code.

1. Getting the Marble Source Code

You can check out the unstable development version ("Marble trunk" using the subversion tool ("SVN") via the command:

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdeedu/marble

If you have a KDE developer account you might want to use:

svn co https://svn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdeedu/marble

If you want to check out the latest stable version please check out KDE 4.3 branch instead by using one of these commands (depending on whether you've got a developer account or not):

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/4.3/kdeedu/marble

In case you have a KDE developer account the subversion command is:

svn co https://svn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/4.3/kdeedu/marble

As an alternative you can download a compressed archive of the source code on our Download Page. However we recommend to get it from SVN as updating the source code later on will be much more convenient.

2. Compiling Marble

You can build and install Marble in two different ways:

1. As a Qt-only application.
2. As a KDE application, using kdelibs and KDE based classes.

Choose one of them and follow our instructions on how to do it. If you want to install Marble's data into a directory that is different from the system default (e.g. your home directory) then we suggest that you take section "3. Adjust Marble's search path for the maps and data" into account.

NOTE: If you wish to build Marble with debug info include the argument -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debug in the cmake command below.

A. Build Marble as a Qt only application.

1. Create a build directory

Create a build directory parallel to the source directory. Suppose that the source directory is named 'marble'. Then create a new directory called 'marble-build'.

2. Configure the build tree

Go into the build directory and type

  cmake -DQTONLY=ON ../marble

3. Build marble

Also in the build directory, type:

  make

4. Install marble

Finally, also from the build directory, type:

  make install

and start Marble either from the menu or via the command line:

  marble

If you're on (K)Ubuntu or Debian you need to adjust your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable:

  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib

To make this change persistent you need to add this line to your .bashrc or your "/etc/environment" file.

B. Build Marble as a KDE application.

1. Create a build directory

This is the same step as for a Qt-only build:

Create a build directory parallel to the source directory. Suppose that the source directory is named 'marble'. Then create a new directory called 'marble-build'.

2. Configure the build tree

Go into the build directory and type

  cmake ../marble

From now on the steps are the same as for a Qt-only build.

3. Build marble

  make

4. Install marble

  make install

and start Marble either from the menu or via the command line:

  marble

3 Adjust Marble's search path for the maps and data

If you want to install Marble's data into a different place than the system default then read on: There are several ways to adjust the path where Marble is drawing it's data from:

3.1 At Compiletime

Use the cmake option -DMARBLE_DATA_PATH to specify the built-in system path that Marble gathers its data from:

Example:

  cmake -DQTONLY=ON -DMARBLE_DATA_PATH /mnt1/marble/data ~/marble

3.2 "At Runtime"

There are two solutions to adjust the data path for a precompiled Marble binary:

a) Enter a key and a value

marbleDataPath="/smb/marble/data"

to the config file "marblerc" or "~/.config/KDE/Marble\ Desktop\ Globe.conf" and (re)start the application.

b) Start Marble using the command line option --marbleDataPath:

marble --marbleDataPath ~/marble/data

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Last update: 2009-08-09