Gnome app start up order.

[Felix Bellaby <felix pooh u-net com>]

Hi All,

There are some obvious problems arising from the absence of 
adequate controls over the order in which gnome apps start up.
I have noticed some suggestions on the gnome-list that gnome-session
might help to sort out these problems.

If there is general support for taking this approach then I volunteer 
to implement it.

However, there are two major drawbacks to using gnome-session in this 
way: No solution based on gnome-session will work when it is not 
running and the SM protocol is not designed to be used in this way.

xsm probably adopts the worst possible approach to this problem: it
includes a hard coded ordering in which "twm" is started before the
other apps.

If we are to use gnome-session to order app start ups then I would 
suggest the following approach:

  1) add a new "SmProperty" called "Priority" which takes an integer
     value. This value would be analogous to the number used in the 
     sysv startup script names under the /etc/rcX.d/ directories.

  2) Have apps set their priority property when they start up for the
     first time then carry the value over to subsequent sessions.

  3) Provide a GUI to allow the user to tune the priorities attached
     to the apps in a session.

  4) Have apps copy the priority that they have been assigned over
     to their default config files. 

  5) Have gnome-session start the apps with smaller priority values
     (higher "priority") before apps with higher values. gnome-session
     would wait until the apps in a given priority level had registered 
     with the SM before starting up the apps in the next level.

Felix