poll: expected return string of ApplicationsLocation from Qt's QStandardPaths

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hi,

I just had a close shave with losing my whole /Applications directory which ultimately was caused by the fact that Qt5 provides a QStandardPaths class, which returns "/Applications" for both the readable and writable versions of "ApplicationsLocation".

The application using that return value was actually testing access to the directory that's supposed to hold Freedesktop style .desktop files (${prefix}/share/applications), not actual app bundles.

That confusion aside, there is the question what this location (QStandardPaths::ApplicationsLocation) should be in a MacPorts build of Qt:

- should it return /Applications/MacPorts (or whatever ${applications_dir} is set to) instead of /Applications?
- should the writable version return $HOME/Applications (or something similarly "safe")?

And if one were to consider a patched version of QStandardPaths (QSP) that returns XDG/Freedesktop/"Linuxy" locations which are more appropriate for ports that follow Freedesktop standards, like KDE (KF5):
- should it return ${prefix}/share/applications so that .desktop files are installed to that location instead of somewhere under /Applications?

I'm guessing that the answer to that last question is yes, but that kind of begs the questioning of certain of the other standard locations defined by QSP, like DesktopLocation .

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this, I think it's not without a certain importance.

R.