Support 'login-items' as a first-class citizen of the CLI

[vraravam]

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1. First cut of moving login_item from under the uninstall block to the top-level
2. Fix issues found when running brew update and brew upgrade
3. Incorporate login_items into info command output (not yet verified)
4. added login_items option for reinstall command

[vraravam]

Could someone please help? I am not sure if I am going in the right direction or not. Would love to get some feedback. This PR is trying to solve the #19333 ticket.

[MikeMcQuaid]

@vraravam Looks good so far! Anything specific you need help with?

[vraravam]

@vraravam Looks good so far! Anything specific you need help with?

Thanks @MikeMcQuaid - I am first trying to cover all scenarios/commands from the CLI perspective, and finally will proceed to the actual implementation of the osascript calls. Hope that's fine with you?

Also, I'm trying to ensure that all code that I write have tests - if I miss something (since this is my first time contributing to this codebase, i don't know the contributing guidelines/rules), please do point me in that direction as well.

Based on the CLI commands, do you recon that I am missing any? I have tried with install, reinstall and uninstall.

[MikeMcQuaid]

@vraravam Sounds good to me! When CI is 🟢 let us know and we can give this a more thorough review. CC @homebrew/cask folks for any thoughts before that, too.

[bevanjkay]

I think the dsl here should be login_item, and repeated if there are multiple.
This will keep it consistent with the other artifacts, that aren't pluralised.

[vraravam]

do you mean like how multiple language blocks are supported in the DSL?

[bevanjkay]

I'm referring to other artifacts such as app, binary, artifact, font, qlplugin, etc..

[vraravam]

If we look at the everything.rb DSL, there are other stanzas that are pluralized as well maybe?

[bevanjkay]

All of the artifact stanzas (which I think a login item will most closely relate to) are not pluralised.

suite
app
pkg
installer
binary
manpage
colorpicker
dictionary
font
input_method
internet_plugin
keyboard_layout
prefpane
qlplugin
mdimporter
screen_saver
service
audio_unit_plugin
vst_plugin
vst3_plugin

For context, where multiple items doc the same type are allowed and provided the stanza is repeated rather than passing an array to the stanza.

[bevanjkay]

I have a concern that there may be side effects of skipping the uninstallation of login_items.
I understand having the option to automatically register a login_item, but is the idea here to be able to skip uninstalling them? The reason we generally aim to remove as much as possible with brew uninstall (which also runs with brew upgrade) is to not leave things behind that aren't connected to the application anymore.

What happens if the login_item changes between versions?

[vraravam]

Agree - I was also facing the same conundrum. This is predominantly for the usecase where the user has chosen to not uninstall by using --no-login-items CLI switch. By default, the registered login items will be uninstalled (I think that's how I have coded it?)

[bevanjkay]

@vraravam I can see that you've been chipping away at this PR, and just wanted to ask an additional query here before it goes too deep. I personally feel that the login_item declaration may be more suitable to be considered an "artifact" (defined as "something to install") rather than setting it up as a separate DSL itself. Unless there is a specific reason you haven't gone down this route?

[vraravam]

@vraravam I can see that you've been chipping away at this PR, and just wanted to ask an additional query here before it goes too deep. I personally feel that the login_item declaration may be more suitable to be considered an "artifact" (defined as "something to install") rather than setting it up as a separate DSL itself. Unless there is a specific reason you haven't gone down this route?

hi @bevanjkay - The only reason I went this route is that login_item was already defined as a nested item(?) under the uninstall stanza/DSL. If I changed it to an artifact, then there can be recipes where an artifact does not necessarily translate to being a login item. The simplest change that I could see was to elevate login_item from under uninstall to being at the top-level (ie sibling) of uninstall.

btw - I have actually stalled, and would appreciate some help from the community on this PR. I plan to restart and catch up (logically) with code patterns that I had missed (just did rebases till now in the past couple of months).

IF someone with more in-depth knowledge could help, that would be really appreciated.