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I would like it so that when an activity is "started", it will check against a preset list of applications. If an application is not yet running, it will open it. This should also have the support to run custom commands.

For example, when I start my "Web Development" activity, I can make it automatically open up GVim, start Apache and MySQL, and open a few links on websites I am currently developing in my default browser. If those applications are already running, it doesn't have to run it again. If I close GVim, switch to another activity and then switch back to the "Web Development" activity, this time it won't start GVim again because I only switched back to it, and not "started" the "Web Development" activity.

Then when I start my "Lunchtime" activity, it will open up my RSS reader.

Then if I stop the "Web Development" activity, it will close all of those applications. (Notice the difference between "switching" to another activity and "stopping" an activity)

in 4.6, just leave gvim, etc. open when you close the activity.

Ah, so activities will remember which applications were left open the last time they were closed, and then open them again when started?

If so, then we're making good progress - but a interface towards managing this would be more desireable, as then we can support commands being run (eg: starting/stopping services, even starting/stopping your music player, etc)

Exactly that, it is currently in the trunk. It needs testing though.

Awesome Will it be out for 4.6?

I'm not sure what happened there, but that isn't what I wrote. I wrote something about there being intentions to merge activities with session management (move session management to a per-activity basis). It seems that when someone else posted, it put their text into my post.

@airdrik - possibly a bug in the brainstorm engine. I guess that post was written by Chani

One of the things related to app starting that will not be in 4.6 but I'm planning to make it for 4.7 is a per-activity .kde/Autostart directory (and others).

So to the user there will (temporarily) be a global session (apps started when you log in) and per-activity sessions?
I think we can live with that.

What is the progress of this? I like the suggestion a lot, but it doesn't seem to work correctly in 4.7 or 4.8. It seems buggy (or maybe I just don't know how to make it work like it should). I hope work is continuing on this good idea.

Moved back into valid from "In progress" as the original idea is still not being addressed.