KDE applications need kfmclient to open links, which is not shipped with kdebase/runtime

[David Faure]

On Wednesday 19 November 2008, Armin Berres wrote:
> To be able to open links most KDE applications
> rely on an installed available kfmclient executable [1]. The problem is
> now: kfmclient is shipped with Konqueror. This means: If Konqueror is
> not installed a lot of applications are not able to open links even with
> another configured browser. For KDE user this isn't such a big problem,
> but a Gnome user e.g. doesn't want to install Konqueror just to be able
> to open external links.
> The question is now: How can we solve this problem?

Fixed now, after the IRC discussion where I realized that xdg-open in fact
works fine (I was testing it over a ssh connexion so obviously I wasn't really
"in a kde session", even though both machines showed a kde desktop).

I just committed code to invokeBrowser (r896218) that implements the following logic:

    // This method should launch a webbrowser, preferrably without doing a mimetype
    // check first, like KRun (i.e. kde-open) would do.
    // In a KDE session, call kfmclient (which honours BrowserApplication) if present,
    // otherwise xdg-open, otherwise kde-open (which does a mimetype check first though).
    // Outside KDE, call xdg-open if present, otherwise fallback to the above logic.

This fixes the "kfmclient not installed" problem as well as the "kde apps always launch konqueror
even in gnome" problem.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Qt Software @ Nokia to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).