Some questions regarding packaging KStars

[Kevin Funk]

On Monday, May 16, 2016 8:45:53 PM CEST Cojocaru Raphael wrote:
> Hi everyone!
> 
> Working on "KStars on Windows" project, I met some challenges and now I
> have some questions that I can't find the answers. I would really
> appreciate any help from KDE-Windows team.
> After I successfully built KStars, I've got two folders with "kstars.exe"
> inside (only kstars.exe" inside actually):
> 
> - C:\K\build\kde\kstars\work\msvc2015-RelWithDebInfo-master\bin  AND
> 
> - C:\K\build\kde\kstars\image-msvc2015-RelWithDebInfo-master\bin
> 
> I tried to run "kstars.exe" from inside both of them and the execution
> failed due to various missing DLLs.

I think pretty much everything has been answered on #kde-windows already, but 
here's a bit of a summary.

> 1.) Is this normal? Shouldn't all dependencies needed by KStars be
> automatically solved by emerge tool?

No, the image and work directories are temporary directories for one 
particular package. 

* 'work' represents the build directory
* 'image' represents the result of `make install`

> In order to run "kstars.exe" I needed to manually add all required DLLs
> inside those two directories.

There's an additional step in emerge, called qmerge, which actually copies the 
contents of the 'install' directory to %KDEROOT%.

You should have all dependent libraries in %KDEROOT% already, so only the 
executables in %KDEROOT%\bin will work (without further modifications).

> 2.) Another question is: Why those two "kstars.exe" run differently? The
> file from "work" folder lacks lot of functionality, while the other
> "kstars.exe" runs perfectly, keeping the entire functionality.

You need to adjust more environment variables, so Qt finds additional stuff, 
like plugins. In the case of plugins, you need to extend the QT_PLUGIN_PATH 
variable, for instance.

See here for more variables:
  https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/
Build_from_source#Run_kdesrc-build
  (note: someone messed up this wiki page quite badly, needs to be fixed)

> 3.) But, at the same time, I have another "kstars.exe" file inside
> "C:\K\bin" directory, that runs without requiring to copy all those DLLs. I
> added KStars icons using "emerge --update kstars", after I modified the
> "kstars.py" file. The changes have been applied only on this "kstars.exe"
> from "C:\K\bin" and not to the other two as well. 

See above, stuff in %KDEROOT%\bin is the result of the qmerge step.

> Why? Is this normal? If
> not, please tell me, how could I update the other two executable files as
> well?

No, actually it should affect all three locations.

> Secondly, I tried to package KStars, but because all those DLLs were
> missing, the installer I've got was not functional at all.
> 
> Until now I thought that "emerge --package kstars" will do the entire
> packaging job for me. This means it should automatically collect all files
> needed by "kstars.exe" in order to run.

It should, yes.

> 4) How could I actually get this functionality and what I've made wrong?
> (or how should be done this job)

No idea, you need to debug emerge a bit it seems.

Cheers,
Kevin

> Thanks in advance!
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Raphael


-- 
Kevin Funk | kfunk at kde.org | http://kfunk.org
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