Unified autostart scripts directory

[John (J5) Palmieri]

On Sat, 2005-07-02 at 13:30 +0200, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> On Friday 01 July 2005 21:59, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Within KDE we have a reasonable understanding what the needs are (for KDE) and 
> we have an implementation that meets those needs. With that said, if you 
> think it's more appropriate to limit the fd.o spec for now to the "allowing a 
> user to autostart programs they would like autostarted in their session" 
> use-case then that's ok with me.
> 
> Cheers,
> Waldo

Hey Waldo,

I would like a brief overview of what KDE does.  Here is where I see we
should start:

- Agree upon a user directory where we can drop desktop files into for
starting up upon login.  This should be desktop independent and not
contain desktop dependent services as of yet (i.e. desktops should not
use this as their service starting framework, it should be for the user
only).  If a service is required for the desktop it shouldn't be user
visible anyway.

    - Questions raised: should we have a system wide directory where
third parties can drop desktop files where their RPM/DEB/etc. is
installed?

- Agree upon a wrapper executable name and command line switches.  We
need a wrapper to make things simpler when working with d-bus.  This is
a forward looking requirement for when there is a full service
framework.  Having a common wrapper interface allows services to be
integrated into a desktop's framework without the service having to know
anything about that framework.  The wrapper is the liaison, knowing how
to talk with the system and exec the service.

That is the first step requirements at least from the GNOME side.  It is
simple and should produce a simple spec that everyone can follow.  It
also allows for expansion and migration in the future.

-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp at redhat.com>