[KDE/Mac] Some issues found while testing branch 'KDE4.13'

[Ian Wadham]

Hi guys,

On 03/10/2014, at 7:42 AM, Marko Käning wrote:
> On 02 Oct 2014, at 23:34 , René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Anything requiring cookies will need it. I know Ian often mentioned kcookiejar
>> issues, but I think the only issue I ever had with that is that it wasn't available
>> because kded wasn't running …
> 
> OK, so, we should try starting kded for good! Just to be on the safe side.

Well you can try it, but I am not so sure about it being "safe".

Kded4's main function AFAICT is to watch directories and run KBuildSyCoCa4
periodically, both of which are already done by Apple OS X and MacPorts.

It also acts as a default daemon for any KDE developer who wants to tack on
some "daemonic" desktop function, such as monitoring a laptop battery or
providing access to the KCookieJar. As such, it has been well used, badly
used, over-used and abused within recent memory, but I think it is reasonably
stable now (in KDE 4 at least).

Somewhere there is a list of such add-ons, but I do not know if it is accurate or
up-to-date. Certainly there are things in there that overlap Apple OS X desktop
functions and may perhaps clash with them.

It seems kded4 can also start klauncher and kdeinit4 and once the three of them
get going, you can get into the situation regarding the machine in the famous old
English "dirty ditty"…

    "And now we reach the bitter bit.
     There was no way of stopping it."

Further rhymes are left to your imagination, if you do not already know them… ;-)

On Apple OS X, the communication between apps and kdeinit4, klauncher and kded4
is severely broken ATM and I have reason to believe that the Linux implementation
has broken bits too. Amongst other things, there is supposed to be a process that
shuts down everything, but it is one of the broken bits on Apple OS X. Killing kdeinit4,
kded4 and klauncher can be ineffective, because there are built-in automatic restarts…
I seem to remember I had to restart Apple OS X…

> What do you think, Nicolas and Ian?

Ian says: %@#%^&*!!!

I spent many hours and days trying to understand the code in kdeinit4, kded4 and
klauncher. I asked for help from a KDE core developer, via Mario, and was offered
some, but it was never delivered.

Eventually, I decided to "go it alone" and insulate KCrash and Dr Konqi from the
whole mess (i.e. not use kdeinit4 and not use KCookieJar). Bugzilla developers
helped out by discontinuing the use of cookies on Bugzilla (in July), which caused
some grief for KDE 4 users on Linux, but was good from my point of view… :-)

In the course of a seemingly endless review of my first set of patches to KCrash
and Dr Konqi, some of us agreed to meet on kde-core-devel and discuss some
of the above issues in detail --- Thomas Lübking, Martin Gräßlin and me.

I am slowly working my way around to opening that discussion...

Cheers, Ian W.