Development/Architecture/KDE3/Starting Other Programs
KDE Architecture - Starting programs
In KDE there are several ways to start other programs from within your application. Here is a short summary of your options with reasons why you should or should not use them.
- fork + exec
- You never want to use this unless you have a very good reason why it is impossible to use KProcess.
- KProcess
- You want to use KProcess class if you need to start a new process which needs to be a child of your process, e.g. because you want to catch stdout/stderr or need to send it data via stdin. You should never use this to start other KDE applications unless your application is called kgdb :-) If you need to send/receive text like data to/from the process, you are probably better off with KProcIO.
- KProcIO
- Like KProcess. Unlike KProcess, the KProcIO class actually makes it easy to send data to and receive data from the process.
- startServiceByDesktopPath
- Preferred way to launch desktop (KDE/Gnome/X) applications or KDE services. The application/service must have a .desktop file. It will make use of KDEinit for increased startup performance and lower memory usage. These benefits only apply to applications available as KDEinit loadable module (KLM).
- KRun
- Generic way to open documents/applications/shell commands. Uses startServiceBy.... where applicable. Offers the additional benefit of startup-notification.
KRun can start any application, from the binary or the desktop file, it will determine the mimetype of a file before running the preferred handler for it, and it can also start shell commands. This makes KRun the recommended way to run another program in KDE.
Initial Author: Waldo Bastian