little c-program that reads ~/.config/autostart/*.desktop-files and starts the given executables
I use it to startup my X11-Session with awesome it is useful because ~/.config/autostart is a standart dir, and owncloud-client and dropbox-client both create files in there already. Others will probably follow.
just compile it with gcc autostart.c -o autostart
./autostart Will just start all .desktop-entries in ~/.config/autostart You can put this e.g. in .xinitrc
./autostart ~/path/to/desktop/entries Starts all entries in given path
I developed this helper to be used with Window Managers that do not automatically execute these .desktop files, it is useless for WMs like gnome.
This executable forks and uses exec to start the autostart-programs as children. When it exists, all these created children will be parentless, which might mean that they won't be killed by your Windowmanager.