Felitendo
b7e0ff6fd1
Steam's autoscroll worked, except when it didn't. Every report of that came down to the same thing: Steam started in a way that carried no -noverifyfiles, noticed the patched web helper script, put its own copy back, and spent the session without the flag. There is no way to make every possible way of starting Steam carry an argument - a game launcher, a shortcut, a terminal, another program calling `steam steam://` - so the patch stops depending on it. The check is on size and timestamp, not on content, so the patch is now written to look untouched: the bytes the flag costs come back out of the script's own comments, and the timestamp of the untouched copy is restored afterwards. The file Steam finds is exactly as long and exactly as old as the one it wrote. A client that verifies its files finds nothing to repair. -noverifyfiles stays as the fallback for a script with no comments left to pay for the flag. Two things fall out of that. A patch that keeps the size no longer has to wait for Steam to close, because there is no size mismatch for the client to chase; only the growing one still defers. And an installation patched by the earlier version is quietly redone at the original size on the next apply, so the fix arrives without anyone having to know about it. Then the launch paths that were never covered: - Shortcuts on the desktop itself. Nothing in the XDG search path looks at that folder, so nothing had ever seen them - and Steam writes one there for every game somebody asks for a shortcut to. Its name is translated, so it is read from user-dirs.dirs and handed to the watcher in a drop-in. - Steam as a Flatpak was never recognised as Steam, so its entry got nothing while its script got patched - the worst of both. The switch goes after the application id there, where flatpak passes it on rather than reading it. - steam-native and steam-jupiter, which are ordinary Steam starts under another name, and Flatpak and snap entries in ~/.config/autostart. Two things found on the way: a client update left the undo copy holding the script from before the update, so undoing would have put an old version back; and a shortcut edited in place and later deleted would have been recreated by `disable`.
119 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
119 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
# middleclick-autoscroll
|
|
|
|
Middle-click autoscroll for Linux. Hold the middle mouse button, move the
|
|
mouse, the page scrolls — like on Windows. Works with browsers, Electron apps,
|
|
Flatpaks, snaps, Steam, and anything else that runs on Chromium under the hood.
|
|
|
|
No app list to maintain. The program looks at what's actually installed, figures
|
|
out what's Chromium-based, and handles it.
|
|
|
|
## Installing
|
|
|
|
**Arch, CachyOS, EndeavourOS, Manjaro**
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
paru -S middleclick-autoscroll
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
**Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS**
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
|
|
curl -fsSL https://felitendo.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/KEY.gpg \
|
|
| sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/middleclick-autoscroll.gpg
|
|
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/middleclick-autoscroll.gpg] https://felitendo.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/deb ./" \
|
|
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/middleclick-autoscroll.list
|
|
sudo apt update && sudo apt install middleclick-autoscroll
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
**Fedora, RHEL, CentOS Stream**
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
sudo curl -fsSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/middleclick-autoscroll.repo \
|
|
https://felitendo.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/middleclick-autoscroll.repo
|
|
sudo dnf install middleclick-autoscroll
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
**openSUSE**
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
sudo rpm --import https://felitendo.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/KEY.gpg
|
|
sudo zypper addrepo --gpgcheck --refresh \
|
|
https://felitendo.github.io/middleclick-autoscroll/rpm middleclick-autoscroll
|
|
sudo zypper install middleclick-autoscroll
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Then run `middleclick-autoscroll enable`. That's it — nothing else to configure.
|
|
|
|
Updates come through your package manager like anything else. Without a package,
|
|
build [from source](#building-from-source) or grab a `.deb`/`.rpm` from the
|
|
[releases page](https://github.com/Felitendo/middleclick-autoscroll/releases).
|
|
|
|
Run `middleclick-autoscroll disable` before removing the package — it undoes
|
|
everything.
|
|
|
|
## How it works
|
|
|
|
Blink (the engine in Chromium, Electron, and CEF) already has autoscroll, but
|
|
it's off on Linux because middle click does primary-selection paste there. One
|
|
flag turns it on:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
--enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Doing that for one app is a five-minute job. Doing it for *all* of them — across
|
|
flag files, desktop entries, Flatpaks, snaps, autostart entries, Steam — so it
|
|
survives upgrades, is not. That's what this does.
|
|
|
|
New apps are picked up within a second by a systemd path unit that watches the
|
|
relevant directories. Without systemd, `middleclick-autoscroll apply` does the
|
|
same thing manually.
|
|
|
|
## Steam
|
|
|
|
Steam's web UI supports autoscroll but has no way to pass extra arguments to its
|
|
helper, so the program patches the script that starts it. Steam checks its own
|
|
files at every start and repairs whatever looks changed, so the patch is written
|
|
to look unchanged: the bytes the argument costs come back out of the script's
|
|
comments and the timestamp is restored, leaving a file exactly as long and as old
|
|
as Steam left it. It survives however you start Steam — the menu, a desktop
|
|
shortcut, a game launcher, a terminal.
|
|
|
|
As a fallback, for the case where that isn't possible, `-noverifyfiles` goes on
|
|
everything that starts Steam: its launcher, its autostart entry, and the
|
|
shortcuts it writes for single games. That one means Steam won't auto-repair
|
|
damaged files on its own — you can turn it off separately in the settings.
|
|
|
|
## Commands
|
|
|
|
| Command | |
|
|
|---|---|
|
|
| `middleclick-autoscroll` | Interactive menu |
|
|
| `… enable` | Turn on, apply, start watching |
|
|
| `… disable` | Undo everything |
|
|
| `… apply` | Apply to new apps |
|
|
| `… apply --rebuild` | Redo from scratch |
|
|
| `… status` | What's covered |
|
|
| `… list` | All apps and how they're handled |
|
|
|
|
See `man middleclick-autoscroll` for more.
|
|
|
|
## Building from source
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
make
|
|
sudo make install
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Optionally needs `msgfmt` (gettext) for translations and `scdoc` for the man
|
|
page. Supports `PREFIX` and `DESTDIR`. `make check` runs syntax checks and
|
|
shellcheck.
|
|
|
|
See [packaging/README.md](packaging/README.md) for release builds and repo
|
|
signing.
|
|
|
|
## License
|
|
|
|
GPL-3.0-or-later.
|