[KDE/Mac] Repository for patches to fix KDE Problems on OS X

[Ian Wadham]

Hi Bradley,

On 29/06/2014, at 1:08 AM, Bradley Giesbrecht wrote:
> On Jun 26, 2014, at 8:03 PM, Ian Wadham <iandw.au at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Re making kde4-runtime an automatic dependency of every KDE
>> app in MacPorts, that would be an overkill IMHO.  It *is* a dependency
>> in a KDE desktop on Linux, but there is a lot of stuff in it that would be
>> irrelevant in Apple OS X, see the list in:
>> https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde-runtime/repository
>> 
>> I need to at least finish working on getting the KDE bug dialogs to
>> run and then we could patch kdelibs4 and kde4-runtime in MacPorts.
>> Maybe, as a quick fix, we could then declare kde4-runtime as a
>> dependency of all KDE apps, depending on what comes out of my
>> further investigations and what Nicolas and Bradley think.
> 
> If we end up with this quick fix most MacPorts users will enjoy the benefits of installing a binary of kde4-runtime from:
> http://packages.macports.org/kde4-runtime/
> 
> Ian, is the kde4-runtime +debug variant required for Dr Konqi to work?

I have never known what the +debug variant does in KDE in MacPorts
and have not used it.  What I hope it does is just to turn on the debug
options in CMake and compilers/linkers so that symbol tables and
source-code line numbers are available to debuggers and crash
analyzers.

If the application or library that crashes was not built with debug info,
then Dr Konqi will produce a backtrace with no source-line references,
which is not as useful to a KDE developer, but better than nothing.

The developer might not be able to reproduce the crash and might then
ask the user for a re-run with debug options enabled, which I guess means that
the user might be re-building and re-installing large slabs of KDE in debug mode,
if he or she agrees to do so.  OTOH if that kind of bug is dependent on OS X,
maybe we could field it via macports-users or a ticket even.  IME only about
10% of KDE bugs are dependent on OS X and I am hoping that number will
become less.  Most can be reproduced on Linux, if they are reproducible.

From the MacPorts user's point of view, the main thing is to have Dr Konqi
*run* if a KDE app or library crashes and prompt the user for info, rather than
let the app just disappear and maybe invite the user to tell Apple.  An auto
backtrace with full debug info is cream on the coffee.  But otherwise it is just
nice for the developer to know what the user was doing when the app crashed.

Cheers, Ian W.