autorun

Revision 3 as of 2007-06-30 22:08:58

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Summary

This blueprint has for goal to implement the autorun capabilities described in a autorun.inf file.
The main use of this blueprint is to autorun windows programs CD's but there is nothing that prevents linux programs to be launched the same way.
Wine has made a lot of progress and implementing this autorun capability can now be done to ease the installation of windows programs on Ubuntu.
In all cases, the user is asked whether to autorun the programs. Nothing is done without the user consent.

Max bought the doom3 game in a shop. He already installed the wine package but he hates the command line. When he inserts the CD, a popup appears asking him whether he wants to autorun a program on the CD (and giving him the program path). He allows the program to autorun and install the game.
Chloé like to listen music on her Ubuntu computer. When she inserts a Sony CD, a popup appears asking her whether she wants to autorun a program on the CD. She wonders why a program want to run and refuse to let the cd autorun.

The automatic wine installation is present in another blueprint : insert here

Julien just installed Ubuntu on his computer. He has never heard of wine but a friend of him said that Diablo II was running on Linux. When he inserts the CD, a popup appears asking him whether he wants to autorun a program on the CD (and giving him the program path). He allows the program to autorun. Because wine is not yet installed and the program is a .exe file, a dialog appears explaining him what is wine / that he should try to find native alternatives first / ... and he has then the option to install wine. He choose to install wine and the autorun program on the cd starts after the installation.

the gnome-volume-manager daemon is notified by the Hardware Abstraction Layer (hal) when a cd is inserted in the drive.
If the "Auto-run programs" option is enabled in System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media, then it checks if a autorun.inf file is present.
In the autorun.inf file is present, gnome-volume-manager reads it and find the "open" key from the "autorun" group
a dialog appears asking whether to autorun this program.
If this is a .exe file, it tries to find wine and run the program. If wine is not present it should propose to install wine.
If this is not a .exe file then it tries to run it normally.