Re: gambas3.desktop install idea to detect installed toolkits...

[Benoît Minisini <benoit.minisini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 05/11/2025 à 14:06, gbWilly a écrit :
> On Wednesday, November 5th, 2025 at 13:10, Tim Dickson
> <dickson.tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > that may cause some issues. If you create a package, and it is 
> > installed, then the user installs something extra, like qt5 or 6
> > for example, the desktop would still point to the lib option used
> > when it was installed, so you would have to reinstall gambas to
> > fix it. When the installer compares old and new files for updating
> > it would fail to compare the dynamic desktop file. ( not a massive
> > deal, as it is being treated like a config file), but if you
> > wanted to step back to a previous config, you would not be able
> > to, so by installing a ui lib after install, then reinstalling you
> > would get different behaviour which you would have to be aware of
> > for debugging, if say for example there is a ui lib related gambas
> > bug in the different ui lib installed. Some distro's have many
> > options available, so which one is chosen by the script on
> > install?.
> >
> > The old method of not specifying, then manually specifying by env 
> > variable or calling option is less prone to confusion in my
> > opinion, unless I am misunderstanding the subject. regards, Tim
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> I'll try to paint a picture here so you understand what is going on. 
> First we are talking about the package named gambas3 (the complete
> IDE). This packages should install all available toolkits on the
> system. So, if GTK3, QT5 and QT6 exist on the distro, they will be
> installed. That is how gambas3 (the IDE) should be packaged. That is
> also why you can select them in the components tab in IDE, because
> they are installed.
>
> Upon install, the installer creates a gambas3.desktop that has a
> 'run with' on right-click defaulting to all toolkits (QT4, QT5, QT6
> and GTK3) even if not available on the system. The post install
> script uses gbx3 to figure out what toolkit components are installed
> and replaces the default gambas3.desktop with an accurate one. So,
> if no QT$ available it will not be in the 'run with'.
>
> So far, so good. Now, here is where you go wrong. First this is
> about the toolkits ONLY, no other libs. When you try to remove QT5
> for example (see attached image) on Debian, gambas3 will also be
> removed as it depends on it. And removing gambas3 also removes the
> gambas3.desktop.

Sorry, but this is rather wrong.

The 'gambas3.desktop' is installed with the 'gambas3-ide' package, which 
is the package for the Gambas3 IDE (obviously).

This package depends on 'gb.gui', that has a dependency on ONE of the 
actual GUI package, not ALL.

For example, on Debian:

---8<-------------------------------------------------------------------
Package: gambas3-gui
Architecture: all
Section: libdevel
Depends: gambas3-gb-gtk (>= ${binary:Version}) | gambas3-gb-gtk3 (>= 
${binary:Version}) | gambas3-gb-qt5 (>= ${binary:Version}) | 
gambas3-gb-qt6 (>= ${binary:Version})
---8<-------------------------------------------------------------------

So you have no guarantee that if GTK3, QT5 and QT6 exist on the distro, 
they will be installed. Hopefully I would add.

So the post-install script should recreate the 'gambas3.desktop' file 
each time any Gambas package is installed or removed, only if the Gambas 
3 IDE is installed, by checking if 'gb.XXX.webview' component is 
installed for XXX among 'gtk3','qt5' and 'qt6'.

Otherwise, for me, it is useless.

Regards,

--
Benoît Minisini.