kdevelop pasting C-style comments

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Sunday February 15 2026 16:09:53 D. R. Evans wrote:

Please keep this on the list. I mistakenly used "reply-to-all" the previous time, that wasn't to make this a private conversation.

>If I can't find the words, then I don't know HOW to check :-(

But you're experienced enough to recognise if there are multiple paste options in the Edit menu, and deduce if one might be more suitable to what you want, no?
NB: I'm not suggesting there is. I'm still using KDevelop 5.x (for various reasons).

>"paste with formatting". Nowhere in what passes for the kdevelop documentation 
>can I find the phrase "paste with formatting" :-(

Never expect the documentation of open-source software to be up-to-date!

>It's completely incomprehensible to me. It seems to have something called 
>"Artistic Style" set.. but I can't see anywhere where there's any description 
>of what "Artistic Style" means.

I told you, this comes from (lib)astyle: https://astyle.sourceforge.net

>There HAS to be a way to simply say: paste exactly what is in the clipboard. 
>Why on earth that's not the default I can't even guess.

I told you that too. Pasting is nothing more than an easy way to enter text *as if via the keyboard*. You're not pasting an image, there are no virtual keystrokes being generated, but for the rest the end result is (or should be) exactly as what would happen if you entered the same text via the keyboard.

Try that, and see for yourself if you get a different result.

>> The latter relies on libastyle and gives the possibility to clone one of the existing settings and then tweak them. If libastyle has configurable control over the formatting of comments my KDevelop version doesn't expose it.
>
>I don't understand what you wrote there at all :-(

It seems that the question here is not whether English is a first language, or not ...

>I'm just a simple-minded user, wanting to paste text as-is from the clipboard 
>into a file.

In that case, KDevelop is probably not the right tool for you. It's a complex piece of software that is designed for productivity-minded (C++) programmers.

>I have no idea why everything changed just because I went from debian bookworm 
>to debian trixie. But it did :-(

It seems like you should be asking for support on a Debian forum!

>errors, and compilation immediately halts). So I had to manually readjust all 
>the "if" statements after pasting them, so that they no longer cause the 
>compiler to complain.

I can imagine how that would make me feel, but it also makes me ROTFL (because why would you let a compiler complain about indentation ... if someone wants to be that pedantic about this aspect, let them use Python! :))) )

>I don't know where you're seeing that.... Under Settings in my kdevelop 

There *has* to be a way to configure the editor component. KDevelop has always used the same editor building blocks that the Kate editor uses, and even shared some settings with Kate. So maybe you can find answers that way.

>even though English isn't your first language.

What makes you even think that, let alone invoke it?!
FWIW, KDE is (originally) a German project.


>PS I have an idea: I'll just copy my kdevelop configuration file from a 
>computer running bookworm on to the trixie machine, overwriting the 
>configuration that is behaving this way. Maybe that will cause the more recent 
>version of kdevelop to behave sensibly.
>
>PPS I copied the kdevelop config file across on to the trixie system... that 
>seems to have done the trick. Pasting now correctly places the clipboard 
>contents into the file without change. Yay!

Well that stymies me. Upgrades do not usually (and certainly should not) change user preferences. You should have kept a copy of the file you replaced, to compare its contents after confirming that KDevelop now behaves the way you want. Also, check what version was used by under bookworm.
IFF that was KDevelop 5.x then this could be a bug in a settings migration procedure (supposing one is needed). Though it is such a glaring one that someone should have caught it...