[kde3] 11.4 - KControl is empty

[Duncan]

Felix Miata posted on Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:54:38 -0400 as excerpted:

> On 2011/06/01 22:37 (GMT+0400) Ilya composed:
> 
>>>  I asked before I knew that a package (kdebase3-SUSE) that apparently
>>>  should have been installed as a dependency of what I specifically
>>>  asked zypper to install was required but not installed.
> 
>>>  >  kdebase3-SUSE includes SUSE-specific settings.
> 
>>>  I don't expect SUSE-specific settings to be prerequisite to KDE
>>>  function. Should not KControl always be populated with something,
>>>  regardless whether any SUSE-specifics are installed or not?
> 
>> kcontrol was broken in a SUSE-specific package desktop-data-openSUSE.
> 
> Looks to me more like KControl was broken by depending on
> desktop-data-openSUSE, since the latter was not installed and KControl
> had nothing populating the selection pane. Where does the data to
> populate KControl come from in pure, unadulterated KDE3?

My knowledge of kde3 is getting rusty, but I had this happen to me once 
and it's kinda hard to forget the general bits, at least...

The kde3 kcontrol modules are all found as *.desktop files with a "hidden" 
attribute (IDR the specific name) as one line of the *.desktop file.  IDR 
whether the *.desktop files themselves are hidden (that is, the name 
starts with a dot) or if it's just the attribute line within the file, but 
I *DO* remember something about them being in a specific directory, as 
well.

The way I happened to get the bug was that I rearranged the menu, and this 
specific kcontrol directory was suddenly empty, if it existed at all.  The 
individual *.desktop files still had their kcontrol-hidden or whatever it 
was attributes, but they weren't in the place kcontrol3 was looking for 
them, so kcontrol itself was suddenly empty.

The way that relates to OpenSuSE is that SuSE is known[1] to significantly 
"cook" kcontrol, adding their own modules, renaming others, etc, so it's 
no longer kcontrol as shipped by upstream, but much more the kde4 style 
systemsettings, since it has far more REAL SYSTEM SETTINGS in it in 
OpenSuSE, NOT just the usual primarily user-specific kde-only settings 
that kde itself ships with.

Since OpenSuSE "cooks" kcontrol to such a degree, it doesn't surprise me 
at all to find it dependent on some OpenSuSE specific package, without 
which kcontrol finds itself looking in the wrong place for OpenSuSE, and 
finding no modules there with which to populate its lists.

---
[1] Keeping in mind that I've never actually run SuSE, open or not, 
personally.  But from various comments I've seen over the years describing 
SuSE-specific kcontrol/systemsettings modules that don't appear in 
kcontrol, either the kde3 version or the system-settings-that-as-shipped-
by-upstream-aren't-for-the-most-part-systemsettings kde4 version.

IOW, the kde4 name, systemsettings, is actually semi-accurate on OpenSuSE, 
more so anyway than elsewhere, in both kde3 and kde4.  But that's NOT kde 
as shipped; it's the OpenSuSE customized kde.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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