[KDE/Mac] Fwd: Qtbase patch for configurable standard paths

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Tuesday January 19 2016 09:05:21 David Faure wrote:
>What about this solution, providing a qt.conf which extends QStandardPaths?
>Very flexible, you can add paths without changing any code, once this patch is in.
>
>And if it makes QSP work on both Windows and OSX, that's even better.

Didn't we already discuss using qt.conf (and reject it), or did I look into it myself and decide it appeared to be interesting but probably not tailored for the job?

Either way, from what I understand looking at the patch, this would deploy certain functionality that is normally only available in qmake to all of Qt. The end result is that QSP::writableLocation is specified through qt.conf.
What does the patch change in the existing support of a qt.conf file?

Two big questions come to mind:

1) Where is this qt.conf file expected, in user or system file space, or (probably worse) do you need one qt.conf per application? If you use this feature to build libraries that should find their files in XDG-compliant locations the user shouldn't be able to modify that location. At least that'd be the working POV for MacPorts; give users the chance to mess things up, drawing their attention to it with a big fat warning, and they will ... and then file bug reports ;)
2) Wouldn't this force all applications built on Qt5 to use the locations specified in qt.conf?

Bonus question: what about your own Scribus example?


If qt.conf is in a format that allows to define groups point 2) shouldn't be an issue (once a proper way to assign applications to the appropriate group), but then you'd also need to support different groups in a single running application, for the Scribus example.

I suppose one could use a central class like KAboutData to assign applications to an organisational group, but that would still oblige all applications to define an instance of the class (would that be bad?) and I doubt it'd work for libraries and plugins.

R.