Quote:

User-startup is for setting paths and assigns, and best kept clean of launching programs.

The 'correct' way would be to copy its program icon to wbstartup (if dragging/dropping from ambient, switch to list view, and 'show all files' to access the icon (.info) file).
You then need to view the icon information for the new file (the one in wbstartup) - set it to a 'project' icon type, and set the "default tool" path to point to the executable.

It's also safe to use assigns in the paths, since programs are always launched from wbstartup afer startup-sequence & user-startup have returned.

And yes, execute is for launching scripts (regardless of whether the script/executable flags are set).

If the application/tool starts from the shell then a script can be used. The script is then given an icon (set to project, the 'script' and 'executable' flags are set, and c:iconx as default tool), and both script and icon are placed in wbstartup.

One notable exception is where an application requires the network to be active before starting. In this case it may be best to use a script that waits for the network before launching the application, such as:

Waitforport NETSTACK
Run >NIL: path:to/your/executable

(Whilst launching network-dependent applications can also be done from s:user-network-startup (which is executed at boot when the network stack starts), this script can run before user-startup, so it is not necessarily safe to rely on assigns here.)

Best regards.

PS - personally I think an "Add to WBStartup" macro should be a default context menu action for applications to automate the simple case. Fairly useless day-to-day, but perhaps helpful for new users.

[ Edited by boot_wb 12.10.2016 - 00:47 ]