Making shutdown scripts execute one at a time

[Ray_Barber]

I notice that anything placed in the shutdown items folder gets launched
simultaneously at shutdown, but I want my scripts to be executed in a
particular order, with one finishing before the next starts.

The solution I am using right now is to have only one script in the
shutdown items folder. This one script loads in each of the other scripts
one at a time and runs them (or calls their routines).

The disadvantage of this is that if there is an applescript error, and I
click on the edit button, it is the main shutdown script that opens in
Script Editor, leaving me clueless as to where the error is (the error, of
course, is always in one of the loaded scripts, where all the action takes
place). (By the way, this has always been a problem for me…I wonder if
anyone else out there is annoyed by this problem with using loaded scripts
in their scripts…is there any way to get the actual error-causing script
object to be opened on an error?)

The other solution I am considering is having a single stay-open script,
which uses the Finder to lauch the other scripts one at a time (in between
launches, it monitors the processes until the launched sub-script has quit
before launching the next in the list)

Anyone have any comments or suggestions?

Put the first script in the Shutdown Items folder. The last thing it should do is tell the next script to run:

ignoring application responses
    tell application "nextScript" to run
end ignoring

The other scripts won’t be in the Shutdown Items folder. Each succeeding script will launch the next one. You must not let any intervening applications get brought to the front as this will will interrupt the original shutdown. If the last script initiates another shutdown it will put you into an infinite loop unless you make special arrangements to avoid it, such as setting a property in the first script to ignore the next time it’s run, i.e. it will do its thing only on every other exection.