Unified autostart scripts directory

[John (J5) Palmieri]

Having an autostart for simple programs and daemons sounds fine to me
but I think there is a bit too much being put into this.  In order to
have a true dependency system of which we are working on with
libgnomeservice in gnome cvs, it gets a bit more complicated than just
dropping a file in the right location.

I think having a spec for easily dropping a desktop file in a common
location to autostart a program is fine but I think we should let
projects explore the more complicated stuff before writing up a spec
that will please no one.  Projects have to define and find their needs
before we can have a unified system.

>From the stuff I am reading in the thread, each iteration getting more
complex than the last, it just seems to be moving into the same traps I
have seen recent fd.o projects falling into.  That is namely writing a
spec before figuring out what the real needs are.

The problem that the simple directory solves is allowing a user to
autostart programs they would like autostarted in their session.

The problem that a desktop services framework solves is completely
different and largely desktop environment dependent.  In the end we may
want some sort of unification but I just don't this is the point in time
to discuss writing specs for it.

On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 16:43 +0000, seventh guardian wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> After being using kde since ever, I gave a try to xfce. The real pain was to 
> reconfigure the "basic" stuff, like autostarting programs and xmodmaps. I 
> used to have these scripts in ~/.kde/Autostart, but that obviously doesn't 
> work for xfce.. The xmodmaps were solved after getting to know the 
> ~/.xprofile file, but for the starting of programs, that was a tricky thing.
> 
> Currently, kde has the autostart dir in ~/.kde/Autostart, fluxbox has an 
> autostart script in ~/.fluxbox/startup, and xfce uses the 
> ~/Desktop/Autostart. This last dir is suposed to be a standard, but the fact 
> is that it's only used (as far as I know) by xfce.
> 
> Also, having a dir in ~/Desktop/ for autostarting programs is rather 
> annoying, as ~/Desktop/ should be used only for the things showing up on the 
> desktop. In xfce this poses no problem, because it doesn't have desktop 
> icons, but I also use kde (at least for now), and it just gets in the way..
> 
> So, following the XDG base dir specs, I sugest using 
> $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart/ for this. It has the advantage of using an 
> unified location, and not getting in the way (as it can be hidden if using 
> for instance ~/.config).
> 
> Also, this idea could be extended if someone wanted to run DM specific 
> programs. So one could use $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart/kde/ for kde specific 
> startup scripts, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart/gnome/ for gnome, and 
> $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart/all/ for general startup scripts (scripts that 
> run for all DM's).
> 
> Waiting for feedback.. Cheers,
>     Renato Caldas
> 
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-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp at redhat.com>