KExtProcess

KExtProcess is a library that allows KDE code to use a KProcess-like API, but more powerful. KExtProcess allows running processes anywhere the user likes, e.g. over SSH, running as another user (su), or even any combination of protocols chained together.

The applications for this library are very diverse and range from adding a GUI frontend for SSH to Konsole to turn it into a true 'KSSH' client to doing remote development and debugging in KDevelop. Another major application of KExtProcess is various sysadmin tools that unleash the power of a GUI without the security risk of having to install KDE on your servers.

If you want to use KExtProcess in your application you can do it in two ways: hardcoded or configured by the user.

To hardcode the process (e.g. in in-house developed applications), call KExtProcess::ProcessFactory::createProcess() to create an KExtProcess::ExtProcess instance and set properties through ExtProcess::setProperty(). Do not instantiate the various processes (e.g. LocalProcess, SuProcess or SSHProcess) directly! Even though this is currently possible, this use case is not part of the planned public API and will probably become impossible in the future due to missing header files.

If you want to allow the user to specify how and where to start the process you need to create a KExtProcess::Profile that contains the necessary steps. There is a standard dialog builtin that you can use for this, ProfilePropertiesWidget. When done, just call ProcessFactory::createProcess() again, but this time use the overload that takes a profile instead of the name as a string. You don't need to execute additional code to set properties or add additional steps in this case.