<appendix id="installation">
<title>Installation</title>

<sect1 id="getting-kstars">
<title>How to obtain &kstars;</title>
<para>
&kstars; is distributed with KDE as part of the kdeedu "Edutainment" module.
</para><para>
We also occasionally make an independent release.  These independent releases 
will be available as a gzipped tar archive from the following website:
<ulink
 url="http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kstars/">http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kstars/</ulink>.
</para><para>
Independent releases are announced through the 
<email>kstars-announce@lists.sourceforge.net</email> mailing list.  Releases
are also posted to <ulink url="http://edu.kde.org/kstars">the &kstars; home 
page</ulink>, <ulink url="http://apps.kde.com/uk/0/info/id/1050">apps.kde.com</ulink>, and
<ulink url="http://freshmeat.net/projects/kstars">freshmeat.net</ulink>.
</para><para>
Finally, &kstars; has been packaged by many Linux/BSD distributions in the past
(including Redhat, Suse, Debian, Mandrake, and FreeBSD), although this was 
before we became part of the kdeedu module.  It remains to be seen if these 
distros will still package independent releases of &kstars; separately.
</para><para>
If you would like the latest CVS development version of &kstars;, please
follow <ulink url="http://edu.kde.org/kstars/cvs.html">these instructions</ulink>.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="requirements">
<title>Requirements</title>
<para>
In order to successfully run &kstars;, you need
&kde; >=2.1 and &Qt;>=2.2.4.  It has been reported not to run under &kde; 
2.0.
</para><para>
Note that, beginning with version 0.9, there are separate tarballs for 
each release, depending on whether you use KDE 2.x or KDE 3.x.  The code 
is identical in each version (we were careful to maintain backward 
compatibility); the only difference is in the configure/make scripts.
</para><para>
To compile &kstars;, you will also have to have the following packages
installed:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>kdelibs-devel</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>libqt-headers (a.k.a. qt-devel)</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>zlib-devel</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>autoconf (2.1 for &kde; 2; 2.5 for &kde; 3)</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist></para>

<para> On
my system, &kstars; uses about 50 MB of system memory with the default
settings.  Most of this usage is due to the loaded object databases,
especially the 40,000-member stars database.  You can dramatically
reduce the memory footprint by reducing the faint limit for stars in
the Configuration Window. If &kstars; is idling, it uses very little
CPU; but it will use as much as you've got when panning or zooming.
</para> </sect1>

<sect1 id="compilation">
<title>Compilation and Installation</title>

<para>
In order to compile and install &kstars; on your system, type the following in
 the
base directory of the unpacked &kstars; distribution:
<screen width="40">
<prompt>%</prompt> <userinput>./configure --prefix=$KDEDIR</userinput>
<prompt>%</prompt> <userinput>make</userinput>
<prompt>%</prompt> <userinput>make install</userinput>
</screen>
</para><para>
Please don't forget the prefix argument to configure.  If your <envar>KDEDIR</envar>
variable isn't set, set prefix to whatever directory &kde; is installed in.  It's
usually either <filename class="directory">/usr</filename>,
<filename class="directory">/opt/kde</filename>,
<filename class="directory">/opt/kde2</filename>, or 
<filename class="directory">/opt/kde3</filename>.  
Also, make sure you do the
last step as <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem>. 
</para><para>
&kstars; uses <command>autoconf</command> and <command>automake</command>, 
so you should not have trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems 
please report them to the &kstars; mailing list 
<email>kstars-devel@lists.sourceforge.net</email>.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="configuration">
<title>Configuration</title>
<para>
At this point, there are no special configuration options or
requirements.  If &kstars; complains that there are missing data
files, become root and manually copy all files in <filename
class="directory">kstars/data/</filename> to
<filename class="directory">$(KDEDIR)/apps/kstars/</filename> (If you
don't have <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> privileges, copy them to
<filename class="directory">~/.kde/share/apps/kstars/.</filename>)
</para>
</sect1>
</appendix>