Using KDevelop 5.2.4 from the AppImage on Ubuntu 16.04 (running Plasma 5.8.9 from kubuntu-backports), trying to run the 'kdevelop!' script from within the konsole plugin shows:

/tmp/.mount_cLADEQ/usr/bin/kdevelop: error while loading shared libraries: libKDevPlatformShell.so.52: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Error: Failed retrieving a pid.

It seems that when running from the AppImage, the environment for the Konsole plugin isn't set up correctly. Expected behavior is that the script would at least run without complaining about missing libraries.


The work-around I currently use is to use the APPDIR environment variable to determine if the script is running from an AppImage environment, then set up the environment correctly at the start of the script:

if [ ! -z $APPDIR ]; then
    export KDEV_BASEDIR=${APPDIR}/usr/bin

    export QML2_IMPORT_PATH=$APPDIR/usr/lib/qml:$QML2_IMPORT_PATH
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$APPDIR/usr/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$APPDIR/usr/lib/qt5/plugins/
    export XDG_DATA_DIRS=$APPDIR/usr/share/:$XDG_DATA_DIRS
    export PATH=$APPDIR/usr/bin:$PATH
    export KDE_FORK_SLAVES=1
    export PYTHONHOME=$APPDIR/usr/
else
    export KDEV_BASEDIR=$(dirname $0)
fi


I also change KDEV_BASEDIR because in my case I've put a copy of the script in a directory which is in my PATH (see also bug #393091) - this might not actually be necessary if this change is integrated in the AppImage. This work-around currently allows me to control the session from the terminal as usual.

Note: I haven't tried the work-around version of this script on a regular package installation, because it's simply not necessary in that case.