[mostly OS X]: KDEHOME vs. ~/.kde best practices, *rc files and related questions

[René J.V. Bertin]

David Faure wrote:

Thanks, David,

> It will be for sure, since KF5 doesn't use ~/.kde at all anymore.
> It uses what QSP returns for GenericConfigLocation.
> 
> So on Linux it uses ~/.config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME if set)
> and ~/.local (or $XDG_DATA_HOME if set).

I suppose it's left to individual app discretion whether or not things are store 
in the .local/.config root, or in separate directories? I don't see anything 
hinting at using KF5-specific directory under .local or .config in KConfig 
(where I'd expect it), so enforcing it via a patch is going to be cumbersome?

And this makes the issues I've been having with my KDE4 desktop even weirder. 
Why would autotests modify files under ~/.kde (or what else could have done 
that, like resetting the number of virtual desktops to 1)?

NB: checking on Kubuntu 15.10, I do see ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals still 
being modified.

> That's exactly what the code in kdelibs4migration does (in apps that call it).

Ah, good. And it seems that I can simple set KDE4_DEFAULT_HOME to whatever 
KDE_DEFAULT_HOME was set to for the migration to use the proper source dir.

>> Does KF5 (or do KF5 applications) still use *rc config files
> 
> Yes. KConfig's format hasn't changed, only the location of the files.

So then where would the com.kde.*.plist files come from? Applications (and 
frameworks, like Sonnet) using QSettings instead of KConfig? Do those APIs both 
write to *rc files on Linux?
In any case, if KF5 applications can end up using binary plists (or whatever 
non-human-readable files QSettings can write to) it'd probably be very useful to 
provide a generic utility that allows to edit them. Apple used to provide a 
standalone "Property List Editor" with Xcode, but that's been rolled into the 
behemoth Xcode has become.

(btw: seriously, COM.kde.* ??)

R.