[Bug 83561] New: Symlinks creted by add existing files are not portable

[Andrei Anghelescu]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83561      
           Summary: Symlinks creted by add existing files are not portable
           Product: kdevelop
           Version: 3.0.3
          Platform: SuSE RPMs
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: kdevelop-devel kdevelop org
        ReportedBy: angheles paul rutgers edu


Version:           3.0.3 (using KDE KDE 3.2.2)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs
Compiler:          gcc 3.3.1 
OS:                Linux

I'm using KDevelop in my work for a somewhat complex project, which contains several namespaces, and provides a library. 

Each namespace resides in its own directory, headers and implementations alike.

To facilitate the installation, I created a directory, named .include, where I added a target of type "header in pkginclude", to install the headers. I added to this target all existing headers from the other directories, and I symlinked the files. 

A simplified view of this directory structure would be:

src
 -- .include
    - tools.h -> ../Tools/tools.h
    - stuff.h -> ../Common/tools.h
 
 -- Tools
    - tools.h
 
 -- Common
    - stuff.h

This is how it the symlinks should look like. However, when I add them using the "Add existing files" dialog, the links use the absolute paths to the files:

tools.h -> /home/myself/Projects/C++/myProj/src/Tools/tools.h

A tarball of this project, would unpack on a different machine using these absolute symlinks, and the code would not compile. 

I would suggest to change the way the symlinks are handled by making them relative to the root of the project (at least as far as links within the project are concerned). Links from outside the project is a different matter and I won't make any suggestions here. 

Also, after having looked at the code a little, it seems that this feature is implemented in 
buildtools/autotools/addexistingfilesdlg.cpp lines ~290-300