Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Could someone explain to me what this command kbuildsycoca4 does?
According to the manual page it is said that it constructs a binary database, is it used for system backups or collecting the user data on the system
kbuildsycoca4, as part of the KDE command line tools ensures the proper operation of KDE by reading in all the .desktop, .directory, .kimgio and .protocol files to constructs a binary database.
Yep, that's what it's for. It creates easily-accessed cache files that are quicker for programs to access than having to go out and read a bunch of files all over the filesystem instead. This improves performance, at the expense of needing to invalidate and rebuild the cache whenever any of the cached data changes.
(The KDE Plasma 5 version is kbuildsycoca5 FYI)
