# Testing and debugging Plasma 5 plasmoid with Qt Creator

The following instructions allow to test the Plasmoid by installing it in a test directory
rather than the regular home to separate testing from production.

1. Build as usual, ensure `NO_PLASMOID` is turned off
2. Add build step to execute custom target `init_plasmoid_testing` which
   will install the Plasmoid in a test directory which is "$BUILD_DIR/plasmoid/testdir"
   by default
3. Add new config for run in Qt Creator and set `plasmoidviewer` (or `plasmawindowed`)
   as executable
4. In execution environment, set
  * `QT_PLUGIN_PATH` to directory containing plugin `\*.so`-file
  * `QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS` to 1 for verbose plugin detection
  * `HOME` to the test directory from step 2 so plasmoidviewer finds the Plasmoid
    in the test directory
5. Set `--applet martchus.syncthingplasmoid` as CLI argument
6. Ignore warning that executable is no debug build, it is sufficiant when
   the plugin is a debug build (see next section for QML debugging)

## Saving/restoring settings

Be aware that `plasmoidviewer` will revert Plasmoid-specific settings to the defaults on
startup. So it is not possible to test restoring/saving settings using it.
For this use case, `plasmawindowed` can be used instead.

## Enable QML debugging

To enable QML debugging, it is required to rebuild `plasmoidviewer` with QML debugging
enabled.

For Arch Linux, I created the package
[`plasma-sdk-debug`](https://github.com/Martchus/PKGBUILDs/tree/master/plasma-sdk/debug)
for that purpose. Installing this package (replacing `plasma-sdk`) should make enabling
QML debugging in the *Run* section of Qt Creator work.

To create a debug build of `plasmoidviewer` manually:

1. Get plasma-sdk: `git clone https://anongit.kde.org/plasma-sdk.git`
2. Create a debug build of `plasmoidviewer` and ensure `QT_QML_DEBUG` is defined when
   compiling `plasmoidviewer`, eg. by applying
   [[PATCH] Enable QML debugging](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Martchus/PKGBUILDs/master/plasma-sdk/debug/0001-Enable-QML-debugging.patch).
3. Prepend the build directory containing the `plasmoidviewer` binary to the path variable
   in the build environment of Syncthing Tray.
4. Enable QML debugging in the *Run* section.