KDE/Plasma 5 upgrade

Plasma 5 is the next generation of KDE's desktop environment, based on Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5. Upgrading is fairly simple, although it cannot be coinstalled with Plasma 4 due to upstream design decisions.

Note that while Plasma 5 is in a good state, it is still under heavy upstream development and is missing some features present in KDE 4.

Overlay (optional)
For set and keyword support install layman and add the KDE Overlay:

Profile
It is highly recommended to use the Plasma desktop profile as it sets a number of important options to ensure things run smoothly.

In order to choose the most suitable profile, first list what's available:

Then, select the right profile, substituting the appropriate profile number (which may vary between configurations):

Any packages affected by the profile change need to be rebuilt:

Unmasking and keywording
In the following examples please adapt "/path/to/overlay/" with the actual path, this is probably: /var/lib/layman/.

For stable users, you also need to keyword the required packages:

Installation via Overlay
This method is preferred by many. Using Layman to add the QT5 and KDE overlay updates the emerge profiles such as @qt5 and @kde-plasma.

If you have not already done so as above, emerge layman and add both overlays including the qt5 overlay.

then add the overlays

and

Now you can emerge qt5, kde-frameworks and kde-plasma in that order using the overlay sets:

Then:

and finally:

It is important to emerge the qt5, kde-frameworks and kde-plasma in this order because kde-frameworks depends on the QT5 sets of libraries to build. kde-plasma then depends on QT5 and kde-frameworks being built and installed to successfully compile kde-plasma

Problems have been found between mixing versions of QT5, kde-frameworks and kde-plasma so you may or may not have to mask or keyword correctly the versions of QT5 and kde-frameworks to get kde-plasma working correctly. At present kdelibs does work along side, qt-5.4.2 kde-frameworks-5.14.0 and kde-plasma-5.4.2 but seems to conflict with qt-5.5.1 and kde-frameworks-5.15.0 so if you are aiming for a stable system use version kde-frameworks-5.14.0 in combination with QT-5.4.2. As off 24/10/2015 versions QT-5.5.0 and kde-frameworks-5.15.0 are both in heavy development and are unstable. They should only be used for testing. This means you will have to mask using  all qt-5.5.1 packages and kde-frameworks-5.15.0 packages.

Also it is advisable to disable the kde use flag if present in your  as this pulls in old libraries of KDE-4 that conflict with KDE-Plasma-5.

Here is the set to add to your  for your convenience.

Installation via Plasma-Meta
The package provides the full Plasma 5 suite:

Alternatively, provides the basic desktop, leaving you free to install only the extra packages you require:

Display manager
SDDM (Simple Desktop Display Manager) is the recommended login manager and is pulled in automatically via by default. This is the preferred option. Alternatively, LightDM can be used and pulled in by setting  flag   for. Change the setting accordingly in. Also, be sure to read through the SDDM page if further issues appear.

KWallet Migration
KWallet5 will have to open your wallet from KWallet4 and import all the data into a new wallet. For that purpose, needs to be present at least once in a session after upgrade, but can be removed after migration and when you are sure no legacy package is using it anymore:

Troubleshooting
The most common issue with upgrading is running into blockers. Unfortunately, some packages just can't be coinstalled so they'll need to be removed. Feel free to drop by #gentoo or #gentoo-kde for assistance with resolving any blockers.

Missing systray icons
Plasma 5 does not support xembed-based systray icons anymore, but uses the StatusNotifier specification for that. As not all applications have been ported to the new system, some workaround exist.

The workaround can be enabled by activating the  and GUI-specific  USE flags for.

Alternatively, the required packages can be installed manually:

For qt4-based applications that miss a systray icon:

For gtk3+-based applications that miss a systray icon it might help to install :

For gtk2+-based applications that miss a systray icon it might help to install :

After install, find this plugin under Tools | Plugins. It is called "Ubuntu Indicator".

Update: as a temporary solution, there is a proxy application that allows to convert old xembed-based systray icons to SNI icons which can show in plasma 5:. To install it, you have to setup KDE/Overlay.

Currently this package is under development, and you will have to unmask/unkeyword it (add  to   and   files, see Handbook:X86/Portage/Branches for more info about unmasking). More information about  is on GitHub page.

Agent startup/shutdown scripts
Configuration moved to for Plasma 5.

Missing shutdown, reboot, suspend and hibernate buttons when using OpenRC
Please ensure that and  (not ) are installed. Also ensure that your user belongs to the  group.

If you use, try instead.

sddm display issues
Check that your user is in the  group.

sddm: KCM unable to change themes
Sddm needs a configuration file so that the KCM module can change themes. This file is not created during the sddm installation, so it needs to be created manually afterwards:

kio-extras blocking plasma-workspace-5.4.1
This can happen if you installed from the overlay and  from the tree. Simply do:

dev-qt blocking
The only way I have found to overcome many dev-qt blocking's is to remove the entire dev-qt packages and re-install them using emerge. Your use flags may be pulling in some arbitrary packages as well causing blocking to happen so pay attention to the output from emerge.

You can remove and re-install dev-qt either upgrading or downgrading like so:

Or if it is only qt-4 you wish to remove to allow an upgrade to qt-5 then this is done as follows:

Notice how the colon followed by the version number of the qt set is used. This can also be valid for removing set version 5 as well if you want to downgrade a subversion from qt-5.5 to qt-5.4.

Of course do not forget to emerge the new version of qt as needed wither using emerge to update the system or meta packages or even sets: here is the command to install QT using overlay sets.

Of course you can invoke a world update as well after dev-qt has been removed to pull in the packages for install.