Look at the properties of your kstars icon and find the root directory. Knowing that, you should be able to find these other file references:
The handler code is contained in the file: ./kstars/skycomponents/asteroidscomponent.cpp
The data file is: kstars/kstars/data/asteroids.dat
The file format looks like this (first 2 lines of a large data file):
#full_name,epoch_mjd,q,a,e,i,w,om,ma,tp_cal,orbit_id,H,G,neo,M1,M2,diameter,extent,albedo,rot_per,per_y,moid,class
" 1 Ceres",57000,2.557665961167666,2.76750591440571,.07582276595896797,10.59338616262872,72.52203270043788,80.32926547452543,95.98917578768719,20130916.6150519,"JPL 33",3.34,0.12,N,,,952.4,"974.6 x 909.4",0.090,9.074170,4.60406067922
The field(s) are defined as follows (per the code):
* The data file is a CSV file with the following columns :
* @li 1 full name [string]
* @li 2 Modified Julian Day of orbital elements [int]
* @li 3 perihelion distance in AU [double]
* @li 4 semi-major axis
* @li 5 eccentricity of orbit [double]
* @li 6 inclination angle of orbit in degrees [double]
* @li 7 argument of perihelion in degrees [double]
* @li 8 longitude of the ascending node in degrees [double]
* @li 9 mean anomaly
* @li 10 time of perihelion passage (YYYYMMDD.DDD) [double]
* @li 11 orbit solution ID [string]
* @li 12 absolute magnitude [float]
* @li 13 slope parameter [float]
* @li 14 Near-Earth Object (NEO) flag [bool]
* @li 15 comet total magnitude parameter [float] (we should remove this column)
* @li 16 comet nuclear magnitude parameter [float] (we should remove this column)
* @li 17 object diameter (from equivalent sphere) [float]
* @li 18 object bi/tri-axial ellipsoid dimensions [string]
* @li 19 geometric albedo [float]
* @li 20 rotation period [float]
* @li 21 orbital period [float]
* @li 22 earth minimum orbit intersection distance [double]
* @li 23 orbit classification [string]
*/
Find the elements for your object to match the above field format (JPL or other online source), and add to the file (make a backup!). Restart kstars and check your object. Hopefully that should do it. Good luck.
Edit: I confirm that just changing the file doesn't work for search. I also tried to touch the handler and then recompile. Also no luck. Found and changed the (duplicate) .dat file in .local/share/kstars directory. None of these changes triggered expected new behavior. So, I'm at a loss to explain to to effect a change. Definitely seems that a change of a .dat file should just work! Sorry for the post confusion....