Disclaimer: the patch as presented is currently a hack that only shows what is done,Marble currently aims to build 1 or 2 more or less standalone app bundles when being built on Mac OS X. There is nothing wrong with that, but it presents a problem for distribution systems like MacPorts or Fink or HomeBrew that aim to share libraries among packages and to remain as close as possible to the runtime context for which packages were designed (i.e. XDG/Freedesktop). not how to do it properly.Just like AppImage builds are possible but optional on other Unix variants, I'll clean it up if there is interest in incorporating this as a selectable optionstandalone app bundle builds should be optional on Mac too.
That being said, here's the pointe patch achieves this by separating all APPLE-specific things in the CMake files into for required things like frameworks and build-type related things that is controlled by the APPLE_STANDALONE_BUNDLE option (ON by default).
Marble currently aims to build 1 or 2 more or less standalone app bundles when being built on Mac OS X. There is nothing wrong with that, but it presents a problem for distribution systems like MacPorts or Fink or HomeBrew that aim to share libraries among packages and to remain as close as possible to the runtime context for which packages were designed (i.e. XDG/Freedesktop). Evidently the goal is not to replace the OS X desktop with a Plasma shell; rather, the idea is that the feature set will be most complete and maintenance will be easiest when differences like where resources are to be found are as small as possible. Think of it as running KDE applications installed with their dependencies in some separate prefix, under e.g. a Gnome, XFCE or even a "bare-bones X11" desktop environment.
The patch achieves this by disabling all APPLE-specific things in the CMake files except for the required frameworks (Apple'sThe result when the option is turned off is that there is still an app bundle that is created, notfor the KF5),-based marble (but not for marble-qt though that ought to be possible too). currently by replacing APPLE with the unknown APPEL tokenEverything else is installed in its usual location under the prefix.
The result is that there is still an app bundle that is created, for the KF5-based marble (but not for marble-qt though that ought to be possible too). A few additional lines create and install an application icon for marble.app .patch also creates and installs an application icon for marble.app with the official ECM function, Everything else is installed in its usual location under the prefix.
I would assume that this is more or less a prerequisite to build a package like digiKam which can use libMarble ...and ensures that the .ini format is used for settings files, which would be a lot less evident if that library is hidden in a relocatable app bundlefor maximum compatibility with other Unix desktops.
If there is a chance that this patch is accepted I'd propose replacing the APPEL hack with a variable like option(BUILD_APPLE_APPBUNDLE,"build app bundle(s)" YES)See also T10112 .