Kile-devel @2.1b5 unable to launch any external app

[informatique@…]

The problem appeared when I upgraded to Kile 2.1-beta5, but I upgraded the whole KDE at the same time.

When I try to launch any external application in Kile (Okular, pdflatex, etc) all I get in Kile's "Log and messages" tab is a "Failed to start" message.

When used separately, all those applications work fine. It's only Kile being unable to launch them. The only workaround I have is launching the apps manually in the "Konsole" tab in Kile.

I checked my $PATH variable, it's fine, /opt/local/bin is in it. I also reinstalled the whole KDE and Kile packages, starting with default preferences. It didn't change anything.

I don't really know how to track the problem. Thanks for any help.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

Please remember to cc the maintainer.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

Wait, 2.1b5? That would be kile-devel then, not kile.

[nicos_pavlov@…]

I think it is indeed a problem of $PATH, but which is divided in 2 problems.

First, if you launch applications with the bundle, the $PATH defined in your ./profile is typically not loaded.
Second, KDE applications are installed as bundles in /Applications/MacPorts/KDE4, and not in /opt/local/bin.

This problem is more general than kile and concerns all KDE applications, I think. I have no clean way to solve this presently. As a workaround, I made in my case a link /opt/local/bin/okular pointing to /Applications/MacPorts/KDE4/okular.app/Contents/MacOS/okular, and ensured that applications bundles had /opt/local/bin in their path.

I will probably send a mail to the developer mailing list, to see if a nicer and more general way could be suggested by the people handling kde4 ports to solve this issue.

[informatique@…]

Thanks for your answer. I had already tried defining my PATH in various files (.bashrc, .login, .profile et .bash_profile), to no avail.

But your post gave me an idea and I entered the complete PATH to pdflatex and okular in Kile preferences. Everything works now, thank you very much. :) Though I'd like to know why Kile (and maybe other KDE apps) ignores PATH as it's defined in all the usual shell files.

[boutino@…]

Replying to informatique@…:

But your post gave me an idea and I entered the complete PATH to pdflatex and okular in Kile preferences. Everything works now, thank you very much. :)

I'm using a Makefile of my own for my compilations and it doesn't work any more for me either since the upgrade to beta 5. Whatever I put into the "Configure Kile / Tools / Build" window for my command, Kile just doesn't want to launch it. Even if I put a wrong command, Kile doesn't complain more than saying "Failed to start", and just yields the output of the last command that had worked (for instance, I tried the LaTeX built-in command and it did work). Could you be more accurate about the place where you have put the complete PATH to your commands? In the meantime, I can also use the workaround of the Kile built-in console, but this is not convenient at all...

[boutino@…]

Cc Me!

[olivier.boutin@…]

Cc Me!

[nicos_pavlov@…]

Replying to boutino@…:

I'm using a Makefile of my own for my compilations and it doesn't work any more for me either since the upgrade to beta 5.

In the case of your own Makefile, I am not sure that it is related to Kile, at least to my experience with external scripts.

Nevertheless, following the idea of setting up Kile through the configuration of tools, I created patches so that the paths should be set to correct values. I added also a variant +texbin, to set paths for the TeX distribution of MacTeX instead of macports one.

[wanthalf@…]

Cc Me!

[NicosPavlov]

Issue solved with new port kde4-kile, a stable version of replacement of kile-devel in r84698 and r84700. The transfer to the new port is automatic through upgrade.