KDE4 apps don't launch

[Ian Wadham]

Hi Brandon, and thanks very much for your very helpful reply.  That console.app
is a beauty.

On 29/07/2011, at 10:49 AM, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 20:19, Ian Wadham <iandw.au at gmail.com> wrote:
>  - Getting the links to sockets and temp dirs correct (on a Linux system, KDE does
>    that automagically),
> 
> For what it's worth, the problem on OS X is making KDE4 play along with the paths and temporary file ecosystem in OS X; KDE4 programs need relatively fixed pathnames for their sockets and caches, which are provided by the symlinks in ~/Library/Preferences/KDE4, while those symlinks are (or should be) configured to go where OS X wants them to go.  But because the paths are built differently (most notably, KDE4 puts hostnames in its temp and cache pathnames, whereas OS X uses its own mechanism where such things are symlinked higher up in the path into a host-specific /private tree) the symlinks need to be rolled anew potentially whenever the network configuration changes.  (That dependency on the network configuration also plagues XQuartz; if you are on a dynamic IP connection which changes often, you may well see things break until re-symlinked,  The /private arrangement used by OS X avoids this.)

I think part of the problem may also be "When is a temporary file not a temporary file?".

By default, KDE libraries (or some of their classes) keep quite long-lasting files in /tmp,
such as caches for rendered graphics (pixmaps).  I have always held the view that /tmp
should be for truly transient files, such as intermediate output of compilers and sorts, but
maybe I am being old-fashioned.  OTOH and AFAIK files are always created and
accessed in KDE in an abstract fashion, via the class KStandardDirs.  This means that
they can be re-directed via environment variables such as QTDIR, KDEDIR, KDEDIRS,
KDEHOME and KDETMP (with which you are probably familiar) to locations more
suitable for the platform.  It is also a way to insulate a KDE development or test setup.

I wonder if Macports could take more advantage of these features of KDE.  Dunno about
the socket situation though.

> <snip>
> I did go to the trouble of getting KDE4 built on my old iBook in expectation of my current situation (ensconced in a motel room, limited internet and no expectation of being able to set up the iMac or the external drive with XCode on it).  :)

Heh, heh.  Some people have it easy :-) but living out of a suitcase is never fun.  In my
young day there were no laptops or networks and you were lucky if the hotel/motel
had a telex machine ... :-)

Cheers, Ian W.