Is this Node.js and can it be changed to return without action?

allend · 09-09-2021, 10:09 AM

Microsoft Teams for Linux has the annoying habit of automatically populating the user's autostart file when run after being installed or updated. I know this can be turned off from within teams, but I would prefer that this behaviour did not happen.
Looking at the /usr/share/teams/resources/app.asar file in the latest version of teams (1.4.00.13653), I have identified this code snippet that I have tried to format for readability.
The 'writeFileSync' suggests this might be Node.js, of which I have no knowledge

Code:

setUpLinuxAutoStartFile(e){
 const t=r.join(c.homedir(),".config","autostart"),
 n=r.
 join(t,p.getAppName()+".desktop");
try{if(e.openAtLogin){s.existsSync(t)||s.mkdirSync(t,{recursive:!0});
 const e=["[Desktop Entry]",
 "Version=1.0",
 "Type=Application",
 "Encoding=UTF-8",
 "Name="+p.getAppDisplayName(),
 "Exec=/usr/bin/"+p.getAppName()+" %U",
 "Icon="+p.getAppName(),
 "Terminal=false",
 "StartupNotify=false",
 "Categories=Network;Application;",
 "MimeType=x-scheme-handler/msteams;",
 "X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true",
 "X-KDE-Protocols=teams"].join("\n");
 s.writeFileSync(n,e)}
else
 s.existsSync(n)&&s.unlinkSync(n)}catch(t){h.getInstance().logWarning("Error occurred while working with autoStart file "+n+";
 was writing file = "+e.openAtLogin+"; error: "+p.sanitizeError(t))}}

Any thoughts on how to get this to be a NOOP?

boughtonp · 09-09-2021, 10:56 AM

Well code cannot "be" Node.js, because Node.js is a runtime environment, not a programming language.

The code might be JavaScript, which is the language Node.js uses, but it might be another language with similar syntax. (There's no guarantee that s.writeFileSync is the same as Node's fs.writeFileSync function.)

Given that Microsoft Teams is written in TypeScript there's a fair chance that's what the snippet is.

Anyway, the important bit is preventing doing unwanted stuff, and we can probably do that without confirming specifics.

The bulk of the code appears to be contained within a condition - "if(e.openAtLogin){...}" - you can easily disable it by making it always false - for which prefixing with "false&&" should work, i.e: "if(false&&e.openAtLogin){...}"

(If that doesn't work, try with "0" or instead of "false", or perhaps try "False and " instead.)

Or actually just insert "return;" immediately after the first "{" will be an even simpler method that will exit the function without doing anything.