Setting up Windows build environment for Kate

Hi all, I’ve just joined this community. I’m trying to set up a KDE build environment on Windows as I’d like to build a portable version of Kate (one that can run without installation and doesn’t save files outside it’s home directory). However, I’ve had issues getting a working development environment that can build Kate.

Using a Windows 10 VM, I’ve set up Python 3.12, Visual Studio 2019 and Craft using the following as a guide: Get Involved/development/Windows - KDE Community Wiki . I’ve then run the following series of commands in a PowerShell 5.1 session with admin rights (for the cases it matters, all commands run when in folder C:\CraftRoot)…

.\craftenv.ps1
craft --search kate
craft --set version=23.08.2 kate
craft kate
craft --package kate
craft nsis
craft --compile kate
craft --search kate
craft -i kate

Based on the errors I’ve seen, it seems to me that the code for Kate isn’t downloading, as if I run “craft --search kate” I can see “Installed versions: None” and “Installed revision: None”. Also, when I try running “craft --compile kate”, the error message "CMake Error: The source directory “C://e1173ffd/kate-23.08.2" does not exist." is shown (the directory "C://e1173ffd” exists but there aren’t any Kate-related subdirectories in there).

Does anyone have any advice on how to resolve this? For example, is there a different way to get a KDE build chain set up on Windows? Thanks in advance.

Putting the questions about building Kate to one side, is there another recommended way to set up a general KDE application build environment for Windows? For example, using a Windows-based Docker image?