How can I terminate another app that is running in cooca. Let's say I have iTunes running, and I type in quit in my app, it would quit itunes. "iTunes" is just an example, it could be anything the user wants. I can open any app from my application, but I want to know how to close any app running.
thanks
kevin
AppleScript is a pretty high-level way to send a single Quit event. SIGTERM is a pretty brute-force, low-level way.
The correct way to quit another application is to obtain its Process Serial Number (psn) and send it a kAEQuitApplication Apple event with these two lines of code:
result = AEBuildAppleEvent( kCoreEventClass, kAEQuitApplication, typeProcessSerialNumber, ¤tProcessPSN,
sizeof(ProcessSerialNumber), kAutoGenerateReturnID, kAnyTransactionID, &tAppleEvent, &tAEBuildError,"");
result = AESend( &tAppleEvent, &tReply, kAEAlwaysInteract+kAENoReply, kAENormalPriority, kNoTimeOut, nil, nil );
You can do this from C, C++, or Objective-C, and you have to link with CoreServices.framework.
If you're running on Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard, you can use the new NSRunningApplication terminate method.
For high-level applications like iTunes, based on Carbon or Cocoa, they're going to respond to Applescript. "Quit" is part of the standard package. You just need to send:
tell application "iTunes" to quit
There are lots of ways to do that. The simplest to implement is to make a system call to osascript:
osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to quit'
You can go up from there to more powerful tools like Apple Events, which would be very appropriate for this problem. You could even go so far as Scripting Bridge, but for terminating an app, that would be overkill.
This will only work for programs that respond to Applescript, but that should be any program that you would see in your dock (and which I assume you mean by "applications"). For lower-level processes like daemons, you need other techniques like launchctl or kill, but we can talk about those if you need them.
Related
Coming from Android/WP7 and having been involved in Symbian projects by the past, i would like now to exactly understand the Symbian App life cycle. I want to understand how the Apps are killed.. if they are..
I found this:
"The Symbian platform is a modern preemptive multitasking operating system. Applications are created in their own process, running in a single main thread. The kernel preemptively schedules all threads in the system, based on their priority. While it is possible to create secondary threads, Symbian strongly encourages applications to co-operatively multi-task using active objects. ". Ref-link
"(..) applications may be up and running at the same time and the user may switch between active applications. When a asynchronous event occurred, running application is moved to the background but it remains active". Ref-link
It seems to me that the Apps are never killed, even when they are in background..
My question is: If the system does not kill them, how the system deals with the RAM issue? What about the possible battery drain? Does it mean that Symbian allows starting each single App, till there is not enough memory? Is there a specific meaning about the use of the Cancel/Back key that might destroy the App in certain conditions?
In UIQ framework i remember a lowMemory() call-back, but one never used that..
Thanks, for your help..
Symbian Apps are indeed never killed. That allows you to have several apps running in parallel without problems. Every app should of course provide the Exit command that closes the app. Back/Hide command just leaves the app runnning and takes user back to the menu. Also every well-written app should also manage his background tasks and allow to stop them when needed.
FYI, in Symbian there might be several background tasks running that are automatically started when phone is powered on. You can get the list of them when asking for a list of processes. You can also kill any process or app if your app has enough capabilities.
I'm writing a small Mac application (in Obj-C) which runs the following command:
system("killall Finder");
I wanted to see what would happen if I sandbox the app (as sandboxing will be required on June 01), and the app wouldn't work. I got the following response:
killall: warning: kill -TERM 6524: Operation not permitted
Is there any way to get around that? As in a specific entitlement to add or another way to run the command?
Thanks in advance.
Your app completely goes against the spirit of the sandbox, so there's almost no chance that the MAS reviewers will accept it. Also, you may be surprised at what "defaults write com.apple.finder" does from inside your sandbox—basically, nothing useful. You'll have to use a temporary exception entitlement to home-relative /Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist, use some non-sandbox-affected API to get the path to home (e.g., getpwent()->pw_dir), and load and save the plist directly. And then you'll discover that there is no way to call on a non-child process from a sandboxed app, period, no way around it—and if you try to system killall, it ends up running inside the same sandbox as you, and therefore has the same limitations.
However, you asked a specific question as to whether there's a way around that system killall failing, and there are at least three (not counting holes in the sandbox which have either been plugged by 10.7.4 or will surely be plugged soon):
You can create a helper app that isn't sandboxed, that does the killall for you. The only two App Store-approved ways to do this are XPC and SMLoginItemSetEnabled. And you're not allowed to enable the helper without the user explicitly telling you to do so.
You can send Finder an Apple Event asking it to quit, instead of signaling it. The easiest way to do this is to execute the Applescript 'tell app "Finder" to quit'. At least for 10.7.3 and earlier, you'll need a temporary exception entitlement to send Apple Events to com.apple.finder. (There may be different mechanisms for future OS versions, but nobody can discuss them outside the NDA forums.)
You can send an Apple Event to some other process—like System Events—to kill Finder on your behalf.
And so on.
If you have a good reason you can still kill applications like this:
How can I terminate my app in a helper app with sanboxing enabled?
I am developping an objective c application and I would like to detect non responsives windows even if they are not own by my application.
Is there a way to be notified when a such case occurs?
Thanks in advance for your help,
Regards,
I think the only way to detect whether an window is hanging is to detect when its application is hanging. And I think the only way to - reliably - do this is to talk to it. Send it some inter-process message and await an action. I think that's exactly how the system detects it: there is some delay before the beach ball appears. And this is because the system sent a message and received no answer in x seconds.
What kind of message that might be is hard to say. Must be something that goes through the main event loop but can be sent by every application. I'm sure Google will be of some help finding it. I'm no pro in inter-process communications and would have to search as well.
You can use the Instruments application with a "Spin Monitor" instrument track. If you set it to monitor "All Processes", it will capture stack traces whenever an application hangs (doesn't process the main event loop for a long time).
I was wondering if there was a way that I could get notifications of when a system process from /usr/sbin starts and finishes. Is it possible to attach NSTask to the running process without launching a new one? Preferably without polling please :!
For UI process you can use NSRunningApplication. You can observe the "terminated" property to know when it finishes. You can listen to NSWorkspaceWillLaunchApplicationNotification to know when an application will be launched.
Since you're not running a UI application the above probably won't work. You'll have to use more low level BSD calls. Here's an example of how you can know when an process terminates:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/technotes/tn2050/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS10003081-CH1-SUBSECTION10
Good luck!
I have a windows mobile application
I have noticed that it properly terminate on exiting, they simply minimize and take up memory. I need to cehck whether any instance of the same application is running in the taskmanager.If exists, i need to kill the process.
I need to write small app that would loop through all open application processes and terminate the required one.
Does such an application exist? If not, which onecould I use to write my own app for it?
Typically this is not how you solve this problem.
You should hold a 'mutex' in your application, and when it launches a second time, you first check this mutex, and if it's taken, you know your app is already running.
Find an appropriate global mutex to hold, and then check for it (I'm not sure what sort you can use on whatever version of Windows Mobile you are targetting, but a trivial search should help you find the answer).
If your app shows an [X] in the corner that's a Minimize button. Change the MinimizeButton property of the form and it will become an [ok] button which will close it.
The CF under Windows Mobile already enforces application singleton behavior. If the app is already running, the CF will look for it, find it, and bring it to the fore for you. No extra work needed.
If you really want to find the process and terminate it, that's done with the toolhelp API set. You can P/Invoke it or use the classes in the Smart Device Framework.