I would like to add a new archive type to Ark.

I downloaded the Ark source and was able to build the program but none of the
compression plugins worked, so I could not open any archive at all. Could
anyone offer me some help on how to properly compile Ark for development (while
also having my system copy of Ark installed)?

Thank you for your time.

Do you have the development libraries needed by the plugins? At the beginning of the compilation cmake should check whether necessary build dependencies are available. Does those all pass?

Thanks for your reply.

I do have all the development files required and I can see that all the plugins
are being built, including my plugin:

[ 54%] Built target kerfuffle_libarchive_automoc
[ 63%] Built target kerfuffle_libarchive
[ 63%] Built target kerfuffle_clirar_automoc
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_clirar
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_cli7z_automoc
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_cli7z
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_clizip_automoc
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_clizip
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_libbz2_automoc
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_libbz2
[ 72%] Built target kerfuffle_libgz_automoc
[ 81%] Built target kerfuffle_libgz
[ 81%] Built target kerfuffle_libxz_automoc
[ 90%] Built target kerfuffle_libxz
[ 90%] Built target kerfuffle_tank_automoc
[100%] Built target kerfuffle_tank

Just let me any other information I can provide you with!

Note that in order for Ark to find the plugins and other components you installed from source, they need to be installed on your system. Running "make install" should do this.

If you don't want to install them system wide, then this can be done by setting a series of environment directories (namely PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH and KDEDIRS) to get KDE to look in other paths as well.

I originally did remove my system copy of Ark and installed the copy I built
system wide with make install as root. The plugins still did not show up.

You may have needed to run "kbuildsycoca4" to make the plugins be detected by KDE.