Shell script Mac Apps

http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/shell-script-mac-apps

by snihalani • 14 years ago

69 15 14 years ago

cleverjake• 14 years ago

MagerValp• 14 years ago

Yes, please use Platypus instead, it'll save you a lot of trouble. The article's solution is very hackish and as you can tell from the comments you'll run into lots of issues.

zdw• 14 years ago

For basic GUI interaction, there's also cocoaDialog:

http://mstratman.github.com/cocoadialog/

tednaleid• 14 years ago

It's a lot easier than the original post says (and it's mentioned in the comments). Just rename your shell script to end in `.command` and you can have it execute via a double click (or launch it with launchbar/quicksilver). I have this in my .zshrc to automatically create a new .command file for the current directory so I can easily open it up in MacVim:

https://gist.github.com/3474341

jmdeldin• 14 years ago

This seems more cumbersome than opening AppleScript Editor, writing the following, and saving the script as an app.

  do shell script "my script"

Despite being an obnoxious language, AppleScript is pretty handy for distributing shell scripts onto non-technical users' machines.

thatjoshguy• 14 years ago

I've recently fallen in love with Automator. Although it make have a few limitations, you can get around it by embedding AppleScript or Python.

In two minutes I made a quick and dirty system wide workflow to download the selected URL.

Argorak2• 14 years ago

A hidden gem in this post is open(1), which is one of the best command line utilities on the mac, especially because all of the sane default that most Apple apps have. I think

`open -a Mail mydoc.pdf` (open Mail and create a Mail with attachment mydoc.pdf)

is my favorite line of Mac shell magic ever.

sausagefeet2• 14 years ago

Wow! Any good collection of things you can do with open?

Someone2• 14 years ago

Here is something you can do with man: type 'man commandname' to get a description of things you can do with commandmame.

This may not work as intended in cases where a command has the same name as a function. The nicely recursive 'man man' will tell you how to work around that.

weaksauce• 14 years ago

Open .

This opens the current directory in finder. I use this one all the time.

Dejital• 14 years ago

`open http://google.com` will open a URL with your default browser.

cobbal• 14 years ago

I have a small script named `pman'

  #!/bin/bash
  man -t $@ | ps2pdf - | open -fa Preview

it opens a man page formatted as a PDF in Preview

Shell script Mac Apps

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