Implement autostart using background portal

[tilosp]

Maybe using https://github.com/matthiasclasen/libportal

[Verhoeckx]

What is the status of this issue?

At the moment Launch on System Startup of the Flatpak version of the Nextcloud Desktop app doesn't work.
Will this be resolved in the near future?

[Akruidenberg]

same question for me

[curiousercreative]

This flatpak still does not autostart for me (Pop!_OS 22.04). How are others using this flatpak if it's not auto starting?

UPDATE: I'm using apt repo for now. Would much prefer to use flatpak though. Found repo from this article

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nextcloud-devs/client -y

[curiousercreative]

Another update, apparently for my distro (and maybe yours) it's extremely trivial to enable autostart yourself. One liner that you can use once it's installed via flatpak (user install) and then a reboot.

ln -s ~/.local/share/applications/com.nextcloud.desktopclient.nextcloud.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

[etam]

It should be this:
For --user installation:

ln -s ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications/com.nextcloud.desktopclient.nextcloud.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

For --system:

ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/com.nextcloud.desktopclient.nextcloud.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

[FifthTundraG]

If we added a patch that does this then gave the app permissions to write to xdg-config-dir/autostart then we can enable autostart without using a portal. Many (including myself) would argue this is bad practice but it does undeniably fix the issue without rewriting this whole function to use portals (which imo is a lot for a patch). Thoughts?

diff --git a/src/common/utility_unix.cpp b/src/common/utility_unix.cpp
index fc7d560..73caa36 100644
--- a/src/common/utility_unix.cpp
+++ b/src/common/utility_unix.cpp
@@ -100,14 +100,16 @@ void Utility::setLaunchOnStartup(const QString &appName, const QString &guiName,
         // When running inside an AppImage, we need to set the path to the
         // AppImage instead of the path to the executable
         const QString appImagePath = qEnvironmentVariable("APPIMAGE");
+        const QString flatpakId = qEnvironmentVariable("FLATPAK_ID");
         const bool runningInsideAppImage = !appImagePath.isNull() && QFile::exists(appImagePath);
-        const QString executablePath = runningInsideAppImage ? appImagePath : QCoreApplication::applicationFilePath();
+        const bool runningInsideFlatpak = !flatpakId.isNull();
+        const QString executablePath = runningInsideAppImage ? QLatin1String("\"%1\"").arg(appImagePath) : runningInsideFlatpak ? QLatin1String("flatpak run %1").arg(flatpakId) : QLatin1String("\"%1\"").arg(QCoreApplication::applicationFilePath());
 
         QTextStream ts(&iniFile);
         ts << QLatin1String("[Desktop Entry]\n")
            << QLatin1String("Name=") << guiName << QLatin1Char('\n')
            << QLatin1String("GenericName=") << QLatin1String("File Synchronizer\n")
-           << QLatin1String("Exec=\"") << executablePath << "\" --background\n"
+           << QLatin1String("Exec=") << executablePath << " --background\n"
            << QLatin1String("Terminal=") << "false\n"
            << QLatin1String("Icon=") << APPLICATION_ICON_NAME << QLatin1Char('\n')
            << QLatin1String("Categories=") << QLatin1String("Network\n")

[curiousercreative]

@FifthTundraG This effort seems to have stalled out or are we just missing the breadcrumb to find where the effort continues?

[FifthTundraG]

@FifthTundraG This effort seems to have stalled out or are we just missing the breadcrumb to find where the effort continues?

I forgot about it ;D

Will try and get something across the finish line this week. No promises. Iirc I have a mostly functional implementation just missing an important detail or two.

[curiousercreative]

Maybe just a note for myself, but on COSMIC at least the user autostart files we discussed manually creating above don't consistently launch Nextcloud on login, seems to be some sort of race condition perhaps.