Ubuntu – Configuration files in a KDE application

application-developmentkde

I'm writing an open source application using KDE to sell in the Software Center. According to the requirements for uploading an application to the Software Center,

Write all configuration settings to ~/.config/ (This can be one file or a directory containing multiple configuration files)

By default, it appears that KDE applications store configuration files in ~/.kde/share/config/<name>rc. Is this not allowed? If so, how do I change where the file is stored? I'm using KConfig XT. The tutorial says

Start that file by opening the tag which controls which KConfig file the data will be stored in. There are three possibilities:

If the <kcfgfile> tag has no attributes the generated code will use the application's default KConfig file (normally $HOME/.kde/config/<appname>rc).

The "name" attribute is used to manually specify a file name. If the value assigned to "name" is not an absolute file path, the file will be created in the default KDE config directory (normally $HOME/.kde/config).

If you would like to be able to specify the config file at construction time, use <kcfgfile arg="true">. This causes the constructor of the generated class to take a KSharedConfig::Ptr as an argument, allowing you to construct multiple instances pointing to different files.

I've tried setting the name attribute to be ~/.config/<appname>, but there is no file at that location, although settings are still being saved. Also, when I set the name attribute, other settings are still saved to ~/.kde/share/config/<appname>rc, such as window size.

How to I change where configuration data is stored for a KDE app so it will meet upload requirements for the Software Center?

Best Answer

If you are using the KConfig API, your application should be fine for uploading to MyApps and inclusion in the store.

You could also instead use the Qt bindings for dconf, dconf-qt, which would allow you to store your settings in dconf, which would be under the ~/.config/ directory.

Also note that the ~/.config/ requirement is perhaps not well specified in those requirements, as it should be $XDG_CONFIG_HOME instead, for which ~/.config/ is simply the default, and which users may decide to change to another location, so that the files underneath it, may be more easily accessible to them.

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Here is a solution that I have found mitigate display/window decoration issues when switching between KDE and Xfce.

How do I find which files KDE has modified?

Finding the files that have changed in a home directory, within a specified time period, is fairly straightforward.

find ~ -maxdepth 5 -mmin 10 (searches for changes within the last 10 minutes)

However, the results are cluttered with a large number of dynamic files(various app caches, for example). So, I needed to exclude those from my results:

find ~/ -maxdepth 5 $ -path ~/.cache -o -path ~/.xchat2 -o -path ~/.local -o -path ~/Downloads -o -path ~/.config/deluge -o -path ~/.config/chromium -o -path ~/docs -o -path ~/.dropbox -o -path ~/Dropbox -o -path ~/.pulse -o -path ~/.dbus $ -prune -o -mmin -5

This results in a much more manageable list to identify the files KDE has modified(I don't doubt that there is a more elegant solution to get the same results).

What files need to be changed and what commands should be run?

Prior to exiting KDE, enter a terminal(Ctrl-Alt-t), and enter the following command:

rm ~/.gtkrc-2.0

This will remove KDE window decoration settings and its deletion will result in those settings not being applied to Xfce. However, once logged into Xfce, the WM will need to be reset with the following command:

xfwm4 --replace

Additionally, if any theme or font changes have been made while working in KDE, another file will need to be deleted prior to logging into Xfce. Otherwise, fonts in the web browser will have been modified.

Again, from the command line:

rm ~/.fonts.conf

How can I (partially) automate this?

I have automated part of this by editing /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and placing the following lines in the file:

    [SeatDefaults]
    session-cleanup-script = home/<userdir>/clean_up_after_kde.sh

The script contains the two rm commands from above. The xfwm --replace cannot run until the desktop environment has already started, so this is still run manually.

In order for the changes to take effect, lightdm needs to be restarted. Run the following:

sudo restart lightdm.

Your session will immediately restart after this command and drop you back to a login screen, so ensure that you have saved any work before restarting.

These commands will be run as part of the logout process now. Note that this script runs only after the user is completely logged out.

While this is still pretty kludgey, it is a smaller step to making it less so.

Best Answer

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