QT5.8. custom Virtual keyboard including

I'm writing a custom virtual keyboard, which based on QtVirtualKeyboard. For my project I would need to be able to use my version of keyboard.

But the only method, which i found is recompile project and replace original "qtvirtualkeyboardplugin.dll" in "mingw53_32\plugins\platforminputcontexts" on my version of "qtvirtualkeyboardplugin.dll". And use the qputenv("QT_IM_MODULE", QByteArray("qtvirtualkeyboard")); function in main.cpp

After hours of reading the docs and trying various things I'm still cannot find method to use custom keyboard localy, without deleting original "qtvirtualkeyboardplugin.dll".

Solution

I'm assuming that you've forked the code, in which case the following modifications seem to be enough to get a differently named plugin to be installed to plugins/platforminputcontexts:

Rename qtvirtualkeyboard/src/virtualkeyboard/qtvirtualkeyboard.json to qtvirtualkeyboard/src/virtualkeyboard/customvirtualkeyboard.json.
In customvirtualkeyboard.json, rename the qtvirtualkeyboard key to customvirtualkeyboard.
In qtvirtualkeyboard/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.cpp, change the contents of the pluginName string to customvirtualkeyboard.
In qtvirtualkeyboard/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.h, change the FILE string to customvirtualkeyboard.
In src/virtualkeyboard/virtualkeyboard.pro, change TARGET = qtvirtualkeyboardplugin to TARGET = customvirtualkeyboardplugin. This affects the name of the installed .dll, .lib, etc. that you see in plugins/platforminputcontexts.

Here are the changes as a Git diff:

diff --git a/src/virtualkeyboard/customvirtualkeyboard.json b/src/virtualkeyboard/customvirtualkeyboard.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ef7a87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/virtualkeyboard/customvirtualkeyboard.json
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+{
+    "Keys": [ "customvirtualkeyboard" ]
+}
diff --git a/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.cpp b/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.cpp
index 73ddeab..4abe9a4 100644
--- a/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.cpp
+++ b/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.cpp
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ using namespace QtVirtualKeyboard;

 Q_LOGGING_CATEGORY(qlcVirtualKeyboard, "qt.virtualkeyboard")

-static const char pluginName[] = "qtvirtualkeyboard";
+static const char pluginName[] = "customvirtualkeyboard";
 static const char inputMethodEnvVarName[] = "QT_IM_MODULE";
 static const char pluginUri[] = "QtQuick.VirtualKeyboard";
 static const char pluginSettingsUri[] = "QtQuick.VirtualKeyboard.Settings";
diff --git a/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.h b/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.h
index 08074d1..19593a4 100644
--- a/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.h
+++ b/src/virtualkeyboard/plugin.h
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
 class QVirtualKeyboardPlugin : public QPlatformInputContextPlugin
 {
     Q_OBJECT
-    Q_PLUGIN_METADATA(IID QPlatformInputContextFactoryInterface_iid FILE "qtvirtualkeyboard.json")
+    Q_PLUGIN_METADATA(IID QPlatformInputContextFactoryInterface_iid FILE "customvirtualkeyboard.json")

 public:
     QStringList keys() const;
diff --git a/src/virtualkeyboard/qtvirtualkeyboard.json b/src/virtualkeyboard/qtvirtualkeyboard.json
deleted file mode 100644
index 76d1706..0000000
--- a/src/virtualkeyboard/qtvirtualkeyboard.json
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,3 +0,0 @@
-{
-    "Keys": [ "qtvirtualkeyboard" ]
-}
diff --git a/src/virtualkeyboard/virtualkeyboard.pro b/src/virtualkeyboard/virtualkeyboard.pro
index 4f3ca69..e9b0ff9 100644
--- a/src/virtualkeyboard/virtualkeyboard.pro
+++ b/src/virtualkeyboard/virtualkeyboard.pro
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-TARGET  = qtvirtualkeyboardplugin
+TARGET  = customvirtualkeyboardplugin
 DATAPATH = $$[QT_INSTALL_DATA]/qtvirtualkeyboard

 QMAKE_DOCS = $$PWD/doc/qtvirtualkeyboard.qdocconf

Remember that if you're using an open source license, you have to make modifications to Qt code available to users of your application.