In a Nutshell — Tips and Tricks
The information in this chapter is meant as a quick reference for a head start or if you (momentarily) forgot about some basic concept. There are also short hints on how to solve some common problems when working with KDevelop.
If you want more information on a topic, just follow the link in the title starting that advice.
Information on these topics is availabe:
Look and Feel
Projects
Compilation
Automake Manager
Compile/Make Problems
Other Topics

Look and Feel

Force Smaller Tool View Tabs in IDEAl Mode
By default KDevelop starts with large text-based tool tip tabs around the work area. You may change this look to ⪚ save space in the KDevelop configuration dialog (Settings Configure KDevelop... User Interface).
If you use an older KDevelop 3 version, this configuration dialog may not be available. To change the toolview tabs display manually, place a MDIStyle entry under the [UI] tag in your $KDEHOME/share/config/kdeveloprc configuration file as follows:
MDIStyle=0: icons only
MDIStyle=1: text only (default)
MDIStyle=3: icons and text

Weird Colored Characters and/or Display Style
If you notice random colored letters everywhere ( on tabs, on tool bars, etc.) and the KDevelop window seemingly uses a wrong display style, this may help:
In your $KDEHOME/share/config/kdeveloprc configuration file find the line containing Style=Checked and remove it. Then restart KDevelop.
(This behaviour does sometimes occur after you left clicked a .ui file in one of the file navigators and KDevelop did load KUIViewer to show the which was produced from this file.)

Full Screen Mode
Select View Full-Screen Mode from the menus or press Ctrl Shift F .

Hide/Unhide the Menubar
To hide the menubar select Settings Show Menubar from the menus or press Ctrl M . To redisplay the menubar only Ctrl M is available.

Projects

Create New Project
Project New Project... will start the Application Wizard.

Create a Custom Project
There is no direct way to create a custom project ( a project which does use its own makefiles). Use Project Import Existing Project instead. Remember to set the appropriate Project Type, labeled by an additional (Custom Makefiles), in the dialog.

Use Project Options Early
Whenever you start a new project do not forget to set the Project Project Options... to your needs.

Compilation

Missing detail in compilation messages
If during compilations you notice some valuable information is missing in the Messages Output View window, it may be that the level of message detail is set too low. Right-click in the window and select another detail level from the context menu.

Automake Manager

Create New Files in a Project
Select the sub-project in the upper half of the Automake Manager, then right-click in the lower half on the groups title you want to have the files added and select Create New File....

Add Existing Files to a Project
Select the sub-project in the upper half of the Automake Manager, then right click in the lower half on the groups title you want to have the files added and select Add Existing Files....

Remove a File from a Project
Select the sub-project in the upper half of the Automake Manager, then in the lower half open the groups list you want to have the file removed from, right click on the file in this list and select Remove.

Compile/Make Problems

Project does not build again after switching to/from default target
There is a problem with the automake/autoconf machinery. If Project Build Configuration provides to select from three build directories: default, optimized, and debug, by all means stick to either the default or the debug/optimized targets.
Once you configured your project with default it will no longer build with debug or optimzed.
Once you configured your project with debug or optimzed it will no longer build with default.

Wrong autoconf version Error
There are several error messages concerning too old versions of autoconf prohibiting configure to work properly. Run autoreconf in the directory tree where the configure.in files in question are. This command will try to update the information in the Build System files. See man autoreconf for more information.

Other Topics

Configuration Files used by KDevelop
Usually you should not need to care, but this is very useful to know in case something went wrong with your setup.