Steam Deck KDE development environment, attempt 1: Don’t use system libraries

Not actually the first attempt, but the first attempt using the version of the operating system that users actually use. There were pre-release versions of the Steam Deck’s operating system that had different partition setups.

Do not assume that it will be easy to use system libraries for development. By default, system libraries do not come with headers on the Steam Deck, unlike Arch Linux. You can get the headers and other things related to setting up a traditional KDE development environment by running sudo steamos-devmode enable. However, you may not even have enough space in your rootfs partition to install all the libraries and headers you need. The rootfs only has 5GiB of space, even on the 512GB Steam Deck model (my model).

To be fair to Valve, that makes sense for a device that is mainly for gaming, but usable for other things. They also tell you in a very noticeable warning message to use Flatpak or the SteamOS Docker image for building packages, although package building isn’t particularly relevant for Plasma and KF6 development. Maybe the Docker part is, but I could also use a Docker image of a traditional Linux distro if I’m going to use Docker for KDE development.

Could you expand the rootfs? Maybe, but SteamOS isn’t a typical Linux distro. It has A and B system partitions that it switches between so that the system can be recovered in case of a bad update. I’m not much of an IT/sysadmin guy, so I’m not comfortable with making major modifications to SteamOS. I got my Steam Deck for free from Valve to test SteamOS as users would see it and I actually play some games on it, so it’s not in my interest or Valve’s interest for me to modify the system so significantly.

Unless you’re willing to risk breaking your system, keep your development environment entirely contained within your home partition and/or external storage devices. Time to restore my SteamOS back to the way it was. The recovery instructions are here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3