[KDE/Mac] launching kded

[Ian Wadham]

Hi Brad,

I'm glad you found my input useful.

On 15/01/2013, at 2:52 AM, brad wrote:
> thanks very much for your input. Its nice to hear how others run kde apps on OS X. Sometimes i feel like i'm the only one :). 

No way!

> On Monday, January 14, 2013 08:44:30 AM Ian Wadham wrote:
> > I presume you are talking about running this stuff on an Apple Mac.
> > 
> haha -- yeah. Although I should have mentioned my test case. Basically start konqueror then select Settings->Configure Konqueror ... from the menu. At which point i get a warning that the cookie handler service could not be started. I believe this translates into kded4 is not running. start kded4 from the command line, and all is well. Do you get the same results on your systems?

Nah, I use Firefox.  I was having a look at the code for startkde and K session manager
yesterday, but swiftly became lost … :-(  It certainly looks as though kded4 launches a
few daemons and also runs kbuildsycoca4.  I seem to remember there is a file somewhere
where KDE developers put requests for kded4 to start things.
 
> > I tried to find out more about this kind of thing on kde-devel, a few months
> > ago. See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=134795632703643&w=2
> > 
> this thread was helpful, glad you asked that list. I know kde is full of daemons and it is not obvious how they all fit together especially when you need to run kde apps on a windows or mac environment. it does appear that kded does a lot of IO monitoring. It kind of surprises me that a daemon that monitors the filesystem is also needed for khtml cookies. Makes me wonder if i'm missing something.

In my young day that used to be known as "piggy backing".  Not good design,
IMHO, but useful if you are short of time.  I think "kded" is short for "KDE daemon",
back in the days when there was only one … :-)

> > If you really want to live dangerously, how about adding kded4 to Apple
> > Mac's System Preferences->Users and Groups->Login Items?  I have done this
> > with kdeinit4, with no ill effects.
> > 
> this sounds like a decent idea for the time being. I will test this out and look for any adverse effects. 
>  
> > I also run kbuildsycoca4 from the command line after using Macports to
> > install new versions of KDE libraries and apps and that gets a few broken
> > apps working, including Digikam I heard just a few days ago on the Macports
> > list.
> >
> kbuilsycoca4 didn't appear to have an effect. I might have to do some digging into how khtml works or at the very least produce a more useful error message so users know to start kded4.
> I doubled checked that kdeinit4 was running (and it does start when i lunch konqueror). It does start, but it does not appear to kickoff kded4.

No, I think kdeinit4 just speeds up the launch of a KDE app (i.e. just one app at a
time).  The startkde README also said it is used to reduce overall KDE startup time,
but that statement could be out of date …  Some of this stuff goes back 10 years
or so, to when IBM-compatible PCs were not so fast at loading programs.

Re kded4, if you could find out which daemon(s) you actually need for running KHTML,
maybe you could run it/them at startup or put a script around Digikam that will run
them (except that might conflict with Macports installs).  A targeted approach is
usually safer … ;-)

>  Thanks again, back to hacking, cheers,
>  -- brad

All the best and good luck with the hacking,
Ian W.
KDE Games Developer