[KDE/Mac] Giving up on kdeinit4 and friends

[Ian Wadham]

Hi guys,

I have decided to give up beating my head against a brick wall.

From now on I will abandon any attempts to find out what kdeinit4,
klauncher and kded4 (the KDE daemon) are actually doing and
whether they have any usefulness at all in a non-KDE environment.

My most recent tests show that kdeinit4 blocks before it reaches the
end of its initialisation.  It is waiting forever for a message from
klauncher to say that it has started successfully, but klauncher on
Apple OS X does not send such a message.  I believe this problem
exists on both OS X and Windows.  It means that kdeinit4 does not
go on to start up kded4, which is what should normally run our old
friend kbuildsycoca4.

Had that worked, MacPorts users and developers could have avoided
years of unhappy runtime experiences with KDE apps on OS X.

Fortunately we now have Nicolas' script to run kbuildsycoca4.

When I patched out the cause of the blockage, it started kded4
and kbuildsycoca4 OK, but then it blocked again, waiting for a
reply to say that kded4 had started.  AFAICS there is no method
to provide such a reply, so maybe the Linux version of kdeinit4
is not finishing its initialisation either.  See note [1].

I will now assume that kdeinit4, klauncher and kded4 are superfluous
in Apple OS X and will concentrate on hacking Dr Konqi on Apple
OS X into some sort of working shape that is independent of KDE
core processes and non-portable objects like KCookieJar.

That will benefit Marko and me at least and will enable any MacPorts
user to report a bug on bugs.kde.org.

But good luck with that!  I get the impression there is nobody much
minding the KDE 4 shop while everyone is out the back baking bread
and icing cakes (Frameworks/KF 5 development).

As you may know, I have repeatedly asked for help from a KDE core
developer: not full time help, just a few pointers and some reviews of
finished work.  Eventually, even though he must have been up to his
eyeballs in work for the Randa gathering, Mario found someone on
5 August.  I have written several times to that guy with detailed info
about Apple OS X, MacPorts, KDE on OS X, portability problems and
a series of specific questions about Dr Konqi, kdeinit4 and friends.

Not one reply have I received.

That is why I am giving up on kdeinit4 and friends, though not on fixing
KDE 4 bugs on Apple OS X when I can.  I am sending the guy this email
on blind copy (BCC).

I must say I am very disappointed by all this.  I have given a lot of time to
KDE in the last 12 years.  Where is the much-boasted KDE Community
when you need it?

All the best, Ian W.

[1] Although kdeinit4 is not receiving the messages it expects during
      its initialisation, it can still receive and process other messages on
      another (re-entered) code path, which gives the impression that it is
      working correctly when it is not.  This could be the case in Linux too.