[KDE/Mac] QStandardPaths on OSX and Windows (Re: An interesting read, perhaps...)

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Saturday April 23 2016 11:42:27 David Faure wrote:

>I am still very much against a QSP patch that we don't apply upstream, or a #define hack.

I'm very much in favour of getting a QSP patch incorporated upstream, but I think we all know by now that that's easier said than done.
I think the best we can hope is to stand a better chance one we have a proposal that is shown to work - for KDE without getting in the way for "regular" applications that just want the native/stock QSP ... and preferably with sufficient arguments that it is of interest not only for KDE.

I thought we'd found an agreement that a compile-time #define was better than a runtime mode switch (achieved for instance via an additional link module or )?

>The best solution I can see until now is adding support (in QSP) for env vars ($QT_, not $XDG_)
>and/or for defining paths in qt.conf (as the kde-windows guys started), both of which
>would help OSX and Windows.

I still haven't been able to figure out how flexible the qt.conf approach would be.

>The env vars would solve it for the CI, while I assume that qt.conf is a better solution
>for end users (at least on Windows). On Mac I still don't get how it's supposed to magically
>work, if env vars are not the way and the install prefix is configurable.

The thing with env. vars (on any platform) is that they apply globally, and that same problem seems to apply to qt.conf too if you're working with a single, shared Qt install. That complicates matters if you want to be able to use a single Qt install with stock and customised QSP locations.
Fortunately that's a choice that's known at compile time, which is why a "#define hack" works.

>I can't easily do these myself (wrong platform), but maybe in Randa we can.

I won't be there unfortunately, but I'll try to be available from here to provide feedback (and testing, on a Qt release version that is). It'd be a shame if all my efforts to come up with a working patch go to waste!

FWIW, it's apparently become easier to run OS X under VirtualBox on Linux (but then it seems others have taken over QSP at Mac from you?)

R.