I have a MAC OSX objective C application say first.app ,in which i use NSAppleScript with admin privileges to run a shell script.This script is indented to launch another Objective C application say second.app.
When you use open command Ex: "open second.app" in shell script it works fine .
But if you launch the second.app by calling its binary Ex: "/second.app/Contents/MacOS/second " in shell script ,then the control don't come back to first.app until second.app closes . when we close the second.app then first.app resumes .
What is the difference in launching the application from open command and calling the applications binary directly as mentioned ?
Calling
open Second.app
is the same as double-clicking the app's icon in the Finder. The application is started via LaunchServices, and the open command returns immediately.
Calling
/path/to/Second.app/Contents/MacOS/Second
starts the application directly (without LaunchServices), and returns only when the application has terminated.
Related
I'm trying to pass some arguments to an UI-based program (cocoa app) through terminal commands while the app is already in launch.
For example:
open appName.app -openUI // Shows App UI
open appName.app -forceQuit 5 // Force quit App after 5 seconds
open appName.app -sendMsg "Hello World." // Add "Hello World" to UNUserNotificationCenter
I will be very grateful if someone can guide me how to implement this, thank you.
If you specify the arguments in that way, they will be send to the open command - which does not recognize them.
You need to put a --args in front of them in order to tell open to pass all the follwing arguments to the app launched, e.g.
open appName.app --args -openUI
Update
If the app is already running, open will use the running app. If you want to create a new window, you need to provide the -n parameter:
open appName.app -n --args -openUI
I'm writing a script for Illustrator CS6 in ExtendScript. At the end of my script, I want to spawn a task (a second script, in Ruby) using File.execute(). However, it's not working. And I'm at a loss as how to debug the problem -- how can I figure out why this isn't working?
Here's the end of my ExtendScript file:
// Do a bunch of other work, then:
var rubyFile = new File(scriptFolder + 'BuildHtmlWalkthrough.rb');
alert(rubyFile.exists);
var result = rubyFile.execute();
alert(result);
Both rubyFile.exists and result are always true, indicating that the script launched OK. But the script does not appear to run, at all. I've tried the following diagnostics:
The Ruby script does successfully run from the command line. The script's permissions are -rwxr-xr-x
I added a call to system("touch /blah/blah/blah") as the very first line of the Ruby script. The file does not get touched.
I thought maybe the ExtendScript process was terminating before the Ruby script could run, so I added a long for loop after rubyFile.execute(). Spinning for > 30 seconds did not help.
What can I do to debug, or solve, this problem?
I'm on MacOS X v10.9.1. And for reference, this is the documentation for File.execute():
File.execute (): Boolean
Core JavaScript Classes
Executes or opens
this file using the appropriate application, as if it had been
double-clicked in a file browser. You can use this method to run
scripts, launch applications, and so on. Returns true immediately if
the application launch was successful.
It's probably doing the "opens this file using the appropriate application" instead of executing, and returns true because the file successfully opens (or is already open in its associated app). If I have a python script and do
f= new File("~/Documents/misc_scripts/getpixelrgb.py");
f.execute();
, it opens it in my script editor, even if the file's execute flags are set.
I'm on OSX, btw
In After Effects, there is system.callSystem() to execute command line commands, but I'm afraid that is absent in Illustrator (I'm assuming you're doing this for Illustrator because of the tag). Are you on OSX or Windows? There are ways around this, by making an executable .app (OSX) or .exe (Win) and calling that with execute(). If I were doing this, I'm on OSX and I'd make an AppleScript app that does 'do shell script' to make the ruby system call. On Windows, it's different. One solution you might like if you're on windows: ocra, which is ruby-specific (http://ocra.rubyforge.org/). It may be possible to run a .bat file on Windows that calls the ruby script, but I'm not sure.
[edit!]
Terribly sorry for the extraneous Windows info (for someone else, I guess). Just saw your note about being on OSX. So you might want to use the AppleScript solution.
[edit again]
So, if my ruby script ("test.rb") is:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
print "Hello"
and my AppleScript is:
do shell script "cd /testing_folder/; ruby test.rb"
Then I get "Hello" returned in AppleScript, but ExtendScript will just return true.
I am new to applescripts and i want to automate a little bit of my app.So here is the thing
1) I am using textwrangler as an editor
2) After writing code and saving it i want to compile the file by opening terminal from applescript.I already installed llvm compiler.
3) As textwrangler provides me the a menu in meubar to open script editor so after opening it i am using "tell application "Terminal" to activate" it opens terminal
4) i want " gcc myfilename.c " to be passed as argument from applescript so that as soon terminal opens this string should be passed as argument and executable is generated
Can i Do that through scripts? Please help.
Give this a try:
tell application "Terminal" to do script "gcc myfilename.c"
Running this without the Activate line you mentioned will still open Terminal if it isn't already open, but it won't bring it to the front. For that, Just turn the whole thing into a tell block and put the Activate back in there so it becomes:
tell application "Terminal"
activate
do script "gcc myfilename.c"
end tell
On windows and such I used to use a trick to find out of a file is currently in use (written specifically).
I use to open the file for writing and if it failed most likey another process is busy accessing it.
Sadly these trick (using C OPEN with exclusive lock for writing) doesn't work on my Mac. While my curl in a terminal is still writing my -fileBusy() check fails.
fcnt call on the fd with F_GETLK doesn't reveal any locking as well.
Is there any chance for me to detect if a file is in use by another process?
Ps> listening for fsevents can't be done because my app launches after the is created by the other app / process.
Apple confirmed via email that the solution described in the link below is a valid one and not considered a private API.
More information:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/cocoa-dev/2010/May/msg01455.html
You could try running the following shell command using NSTask:
lsof -Fc path/to/thefile
That will give you the process ID and name of any process(es) that have thefile open.
Is there a way to configure an application shortcut so that a Windows shell script is run prior to kicking off the application? In my case, I want to back-up some files before the application runs.
Thanks!
You could change the application shortcut to actually run the shell script and just add a START command to the end of the script so it runs the program once complete.
IE: change the notepad shortcut from %SYSTEMROOT%\Windows\Notepad.exe to c:\launchNotepad.bat and have launchnotepad.bat be something like
COPY importantfile.txt importantfile.txt.bak
START %SYSTEMROOT%\Windows\Notepad.exe importantfile.txt