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On December 25th, 2015, 2:42 p.m. UTC, René J.V. Bertin wrote:

src/kdeinit/kinit_mac.mm (Diff revision 4)
		662	// attempt to the correct application name
		663	QFileInfo fi(QString::fromUtf8(executable));
		664	[[NSProcessInfo processInfo] setProcessName:(NSString*)fi.baseName().toCFString()];
		665	qApp->setApplicationName(fi.baseName());
		666	execvp(executable.constData(), d.argv);

I'd love to add [NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps:YES] and/or [NSApp unhide] here, preceded by [NSApplication sharedApplication] so that the spawned executable appears in front and not behind the windows of the "parent" application.

I think that's a very sensible thing to do, but sadly those calls are part of (or call into) the SDKs that are off-limits between a fork() and an exec().

This really makes me reconsider to use a wrapper, because it quickly grows old 1) having to wait for an expected application to appear, 2) realise it must have opened somewhere in the background and 3) go dig it up.

If only I could be sure that the spawned application is NOT supposed to inherit the environment and other context from kdeinit5. In that case I could rewrite the command to execute so that it uses LaunchServices ... via a proxy that's already available (/usr/bin/open).

NB: this may well be why [NSProcessInfo setProcessName:] doesn't appear to have the intended effect.

So, David, what's worse here — introducing an additional layer or putting up with applications that play hide and seek?

Starting apps via kdeinit is only an optimization. It's perfectly OK to start apps directly with QProcess instead. So yes, the spawned application is NOT supposed to inherit the environment from kdeinit5.

As previously stated, I strongly recommend to avoid the whole complication of "stuff I can't do between fork and exec" on OSX, but not using fork and exec at all (wrapper or not), and just starting the other process directly with QProcess. If that doesn't bring the new app to the front, maybe that's a QProcess bug or missing feature? If you think about this as a "pure Qt application developer", such a developer would expect QProcess to be able to start a GUI app and have it pop up to the front. Maybe you can write a small test with QProcess, to check if that works out of the box (maybe all your troubles actually come from the indirection via kdeinit...)

- David

On November 26th, 2015, 4:20 p.m. UTC, René J.V. Bertin wrote:

Review request for KDE Software on Mac OS X and KDE Frameworks.

By René J.V. Bertin.

Updated Nov. 26, 2015, 4:20 p.m.

Repository: kinit

Description

This patch addresses several issues with the OS X adaptations:

-1 replaces the obsolete Q_OS_MAC with Q_OS_OSX -2 builds the relevant applications nongui instead of as app bundles -3 turns klauncher into an "agent" by setting LSUIElement to true programmatically -4 ports a patch that has been in MacPorts' port:kdelibs4 since October 14th 2009, which prevents a kdeinit crash that is caused by calling exec after fork() in an application that has used non-POSIX APIs and/or calling those APIs in the exec'ed application. This patch (originally by MacPorts developers Jeremy Lainé and Jeremy Lavergne) rearranges call order and uses a proxy application to do the actual exec.

Testing

On OS X 10.9.5 with Qt 5.5.1 and KF5rameworks 5.16.0 . With this patch, starting kded5 will launch kdeinit5 and klauncher5 as expected, but kdeinit5 --kded does not yet launch kded5. This is probably acceptable for typical KF5 use on OS X (kded5 can be launched as a login item or as a LaunchAgent) but I will have another look at why the kded isn't started.

I am not yet able to perform further testing; practice will for instance have to show whether point 2 above needs revision (apps that need to be installed as app bundles).

Similarly it will have to be seen whether point 3 above has any drawbacks. Applications running as agents do not show up in the Dock or App Switcher. Thus, klauncher will not be able to "turn itself into" an application that does have a full GUI presence with my current modification. I don't know if that's supposed to be possible though. NB: I have been building the KDE4 klauncher in a way that makes it impossible to construct a GUI at all, so I'm not expecting issues in KF5 as long as klauncher's role hasn't evolved too much.

Diffs

src/kdeinit/CMakeLists.txt (f94db71)
src/kdeinit/kdeinit5_proxy.mm (PRE-CREATION)
src/kdeinit/kinit.cpp (a18008a)
src/kdeinit/kinit_mac.mm (PRE-CREATION)
src/klauncher/CMakeLists.txt (746edfa)
src/klauncher/klauncher.h (e155f72)
src/klauncher/klauncher.cpp (8b3d343)
src/klauncher/klauncher_main.cpp (f69aaa5)
src/start_kdeinit/CMakeLists.txt (46d6cb3)
src/wrapper.cpp (95b7ec2)

View Diff