Question

I have to deploy a Qt Application on the following environments:

• Mac OS/X (>= Tiger 10.4 Intel Based, up to Snow Leopard 10.6.+)
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7

I need a common access directory to put the License File, and I need every user of the machine to have read/write access to it – not only the administrator.

I checked many Qt functions like the following:

QString QDir::homePath()
QDir QDir::home ()
QString QDir::rootPath ()
QString QDir::tempPath ()

…but they all seem to return either user-specific or too-general paths.

Is there any Qt specific function to get a common “Applications Path”?

I ‘ve started to think about creating my own function taking into account the OS version,
but even in this case I feel a bit lost.
Do you know any good source to find what should be an appropriate path for each one for the OS I mentioned above?

Answer 1

This is an answer to my own question,
but I ‘ll wait to see if there is any better solutions.
(maybe there is a Qt function I missed).

I did the following hack using the QSettings class
(@thequark: +1 for the inspiration):

---------------------------------------------
QString orgName = "fooOrg";
QString appName = "fooApp";
QSettings qsettings(QSettings::IniFormat, QSettings::SystemScope, orgName, appName);
QString iniFilepath = qsettings.fileName();
QString commAppPath = iniFilepath.left(iniFilepath.length() - 
                                       QString("/fooOrg/fooApp.ini").length());
---------------------------------------------

As you can see, I don’t really use the QSettings object but
I just get its filepath to see where Qt is going to store it.

It’s important to use:

• QSettings::IniFormat: Because we are
  interested in a file – not e.g. a
  Windows registry position
• QSettings::SystemScope: Because we want a machine specific and not
  a user-specific path

The above code yields the following results for (1) iniFilepath (2) commAppPath variables and the various O/S:

Mac Snow Leopard 10.6.7

1. /Library/Preferences/Qt/fooOrg/fooApp.ini
2. /Library/Preferences/Qt

Windows XP-SP3

1. C:/Documents And Settings/All Users/Application Data/fooOrg/fooApp.ini
2. C:/Documents And Settings/All Users/Application Data

Windows 7 (64) and Windows Vista SP2

1. C:/ProgramData/fooOrg/fooApp.ini
2. C:/ProgramData

Although it’s a hack, I think it’s a good solution
involving only internal Qt calls and not using any O/S specific functions.

If you have any better idea… please let me know.

EDIT – PS: In Mac OS-X the directory “/Library/Preferences” is not writable for a non-admin user. I finally used the directory “/Users/Shared”.