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?
If this problem is a consistent problem, you could put a “Display Dialog” command at the beginning of each script, letting you know which script is about to run. It is NOT a permanent solution, but it could be a starting point.
Hope this helps, Brad Bumgarner, CTA
In case the suggestions of Mark and Brad would not (always) work or handle errors in a correct manner, I would still consider to put all your routines in the main shutdown script (preferably in consecutive “try/end try” or “timeout/end timeout” handlers)
I have some bad experiences myself in scripts calling scripts - where it comes to error handling and reliability - especially within shutdown routines.
Eelco Houwink