Fixing 49564 - dependency/BC problem?

[Waldo Bastian]

On Sunday 09 March 2003 01:55, Ravikiran Rajagopal wrote:
> Hello,
>   KConfigBackEnd::sync() returns nothing, and hence fails silently when the
> user's local config file is not writable. As I understand it, we cannot
> have kdecore dependent on kdeui. So we cannot use a UI element to make the
> user aware of the situation.
>   The only alternatives I can think of:
>
> 1. Add a sync() function which indicates success or failure - not possible
> to due to BC issues as sync() is virtual. Don't know whether changing a
> return type is BC though.
>
> 2. Emit a signal saying it failed, and let the app take care of it. Does
> not help existing binaries, and _all_ apps need to be ported.
>
> 3. Add a function canWeSaveConfig(). This has the same problem as #2.
>
> 4. If the user's local config file is not writable, try to make it
> writable. Very invasive, and I don't like it.

kconfig could emit a signal that was caught by kapplication. kapplication then 
needs to show a dialog without linking to kdeui. That in itself is a solvable 
problem. Probably the easiest solution would be to exec kdialog for that. We 
may want to limit this to the moment at which kapp->config() gets created. At 
this moment we can be pretty certain that no GUI elements are visible who 
could be deprived from paint-events by using exec. Using anything other than 
exec is probably a bad idea since that would involve the event loop which may 
lead to unexpected reentrancy problems.

What's harder is to decide whether a non-writable local config file is 
non-writable by accident or by intention. I think a config option for that 
would be appropriate. The dialog could have a "don't show/ask this again" 
checkbox to change this option, someone who intentionally makes a config file 
non-writable can then easily disable these warnings. (Although it might be 
somewhat tricky to save the don't ask again setting if the file isn't 
writable :)

The above should not apply to config files that are made non-writable with 
[$i] since that is always intentional.

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian at suse.com