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I built a Lazarus GUI application using Ubuntu and then took it onto Windows to compile. On Ubuntu I run it from the terminal like this:
./prg arg
It runs fine using the argument arg passed to it. On Windows this is what I did:
Create shortcut to exe
Edit shortcut and include the argument.
To run on Windows, I run the shortcut.
It works fine but there's an additional terminal window opening behind the application, when I run the shortcut. When the application exits, the window closes with it. The terminal window is empty.
On Windows, before compiling I had to uncheck the -WG switch in compiler options. This was because althought the app is GUI-based, there is a simple routine that checks for the argument passed at command line and uses Writeln to output a message if there were errors.
My key question is why is this terminal window coming up on Windows and how do I get rid of it or suppress it?
Thanks!
(1) Make sure you have set {$APPTYPE GUI} in your code. Otherwise there will be always a "terminal" opened on windows.
(2) Maybe you are confusing a "real" shortcut (*.lnk) with cmd/batch file? The latter also opens a terminal that dies when the lauched app closes.
Vim under win32 opens a command prompt (vimrun.exe actually, which opens in a terminal window) on every external command, silent or not. Yes, the terminal closes automatically, but it is still quite annoying.
This makes plugins that make extensive use of external commands, such as syntastic (it runs a command on buffer open/save), a real pain.
Is there some way to fix this behavior? What I want is for the terminal to open only for non-silent commands.
Rather than just ![windows command] you might try:
!start /min [windows command]
Alternatively, if you define a shortcut to a windows app you can click on the shortcut's properties and set it up to run as 'Minimized' rather than as 'Normal'
In both cases above an app button will show up on taskbar as the app is opened, as there would be for any minimized application. But it's less intrusive than having an actual window open.
NOTE The !start command solution runs the command asynchronously, resumes Vim immediately without waiting for the command to complete, which may often not be what you want. In that case the use of shortcut set up to run as minimized is better solution.
Just to bring closure: I wrote a replacement runner utility for Vim on Windows that doesn't open a visible command prompt. Here it is: vimrun-silent.
I want to launch an app on OSX from a script. I need to pass some command line arguments. Unfortunately, open doesn't accept command line args.
The only option I can think of is to use nohup myApp > /dev/null & to launch my app so it can exist independently of the script that launches it.
Any better suggestions?
As was mentioned in the question here, the open command in 10.6 now has an args flag, so you can call:
open -n ./AppName.app --args -AppCommandLineArg
In OS X 10.6, the open command was enhanced to allow passing of arguments to the application:
open ./AppName.app --args -AppCommandLineArg
But for older versions of Mac OS X, and because app bundles aren't designed to be passed command line arguments, the conventional mechanism is to use Apple Events for files like here for Cocoa apps or here for Carbon apps. You could also probably do something kludgey by passing parameters in using environment variables.
An application bundle (.app file) is actually a directory. Instead of using open and the .app filename, you can move into the app's directory and start the actual machine code program located inside. For instance:
$ cd /Applications/LittleSnapper.app/
$ ls
Contents
$ cd Contents/MacOS/
$ ./LittleSnapper
That is the actual binary executable that might accept arguments (or not, in LittleSnapper's case).
In case your app needs to work on files (what you would normally expect to pass as: ./myApp *.jpg), you would do it like this:
open *.jpg -a myApp
You can launch apps using open:
open -a APP_YOU_WANT
This should open the application that you want.
open also has an -a flag, that you can use to open up an app from within the Applications folder by it's name (or by bundle identifier with -b flag). You can combine this with the --args option to achieve the result you want:
open -a APP_NAME --args ARGS
To open up a video in VLC player that should scale with a factor 2x and loop you would for example exectute:
open -a VLC --args -L --fullscreen
Note that I could not get the output of the commands to the terminal. (although I didn't try anything to resolve that)
I would recommend the technique that MathieuK offers. In my case, I needed to try it with Chromium:
> Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium --enable-remote-fonts
I realize this doesn't solve the OP's problem, but hopefully it saves someone else's time. :)
Lots of complex answers when you can simply access Applications folder and type:
open -a [APP NAME]
This is it!
I wanted to have two separate instances of Chrome running, each using its own profile. I wanted to be able to start them from Spotlight, as is my habit for starting Mac apps. In other words, I needed two regular Mac applications, regChrome for normal browsing and altChrome to use the special profile, to be easily started by keying ⌘-space to bring up Spotlight, then 'reg' or 'alt', then Enter.
I suppose the brute-force way to accomplish the above goal would be to make two copies of the Google Chrome application bundle under the respective names. But that's ugly and complicates updating.
What I ended up with was two AppleScript applications containing two commands each. Here is the one for altChrome:
do shell script "cd /Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app/Contents/Resources/; rm app.icns; ln /Users/garbuck/local/chromeLaunchers/Chrome-swirl.icns app.icns"
do shell script "/Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\\ Chrome --user-data-dir=/Users/garbuck/altChrome >/dev/null 2>&1 &"
The second line starts Chrome with the alternate profile (the --user-data-dir parameter).
The first line is an unsuccessful attempt to give the two applications distinct icons. Initially, it appears to work fine. However, sooner or later, Chrome rereads its icon file and gets the one corresponding to whichever of the two apps was started last, resulting in two running applications with the same icon. But I haven't bothered to try to fix it — I keep the two browsers on separate desktops, and navigating between them hasn't been a problem.
Beginning with OS X Yosemite, we can now use AppleScript and Automator to automate complex tasks. JavaScript for automation can now be used as the scripting language.
This page gives a good example example script that can be written at the command line using bash and osascript interactive mode. It opens a Safari tab and navigates to example.com.
http://developer.telerik.com/featured/javascript-os-x-automation-example/
osascript -l JavaScript -i
Safari = Application("Safari");
window = Safari.windows[0];
window.name();
tab = Safari.Tab({url:"http://www.example.com"});
window.tabs.push(tab);
window.currentTab = tab;
Simple, here replace the "APP" by name of the app you want to launch.
export APP_HOME=/Applications/APP.app/Contents/MacOS
export PATH=$PATH:$APP_HOME
Thanks me later.
With applescript:
tell application "Firefox" to activate
Why not just set add path to to the bin of the app. For MacVim, I did the following.
export PATH=/Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/bin:$PATH
An alias, is another option I tried.
alias mvim='/Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/bin/mvim'
alias gvim=mvim
With the export PATH I can call all of the commands in the app. Arguments passed well for my test with MacVim. Whereas the alias, I had to alias each command in the bin.
mvim README.txt
gvim Anotherfile.txt
Enjoy the power of alias and PATH. However, you do need to monitor changes when the OS is upgraded.
To Create a New Text File OR open an existing one, in any folder, using a Text/Code Editor like the Free TextMate app on MACOSX, use this command on Terminal:
open -n /Applications/TextMate.app --args "$PWD/some file.txt"
Instead of a Text File, you can use any file type, based on your app's requirements and its support for this syntax.
This command also simulates the New Text Document Here Command on Windows and has been tested on MacBook Pro 2021 and Monterey 12.2.1 successfully.
Is it possible to open a terminal window with 3 tabs. Each tab should have different path.
Example:
Tab1: /etc
Tab2: /bin
Tab3: /www/ tail -f file.txt
This is absolutely possible, but it will take some work on your part. The first thing you need is to set up each window/tab you want in your Settings:
I have 4 tabs that I open automagically every time I open Terminal. DB Shell, Editor, Server, and Shell. These are all within the Sasquatch (don't ask) project, thus the naming. Each of these should then have a unique command associated with them:
In this case, I'm executing vim. If you happen to have a specific directory you'd like to start off in, you can use something like vim ~/projects/main/. Really whatever you want to go in there is the command the shell will execute when it opens. Now you need to open all your windows/tabs:
Close everything.
Open a new window for each of your profiles.
Go to the Shell menu => New Tab/New Window => Select the profile you created above.
Repeat for each window or tab you want.
Once you have all of your windows and/or tabs open, save them as a Window Group.
Go to the Window menu => Save Window As Group....
Give your Window Group a name (this is helpful later).
If you want this group to open every time you open Terminal, check the box at the bottom of this screen, and then hit save.
Close out of all of your Windows/Tabs (time to test it!).
Open your new Window Group.
Go to the Window menu => Open Window Group => Select the group you just made.
This should pop up all the windows you just had, in the same position. Each of the commands you set up in Settings should be launched in their respective tabs.
As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal makes this much easier to do, without creating new profiles for each command.
By default, Terminal will remember and restore the current working directory for each terminal in a Window Group. (If the working directory has been communicated to Terminal using an escape sequence. The default shell, bash, will do this at every command prompt. For other shells, you'll need to adapt the code in /etc/bashrc.)
If you create a terminal with Shell > New Command, Terminal will automatically run that command when a Window Group is opened. Terminal will automatically run a limited set of "safe" commands†, and when saving a Window Group there's an option to run all commands in the group.
Terminal also automatically does these for all windows when restarting Terminal with Resume enabled. So, you may not even have to create a Window Group, depending on your circumstances.
For your example case:
Use Shell > New Command to run "tail -f /www/file.txt".
Create a new tab and "cd /etc".
Create a new tab and "cd /bin".
Save them with Window > Save Windows as Group. Be sure to check the "Restore all commands" checkbox.
Each time you open that Window Group, it will recreate those windows and run the commands. If you need to run a command and specify the starting directory, in the New Command dialog check the "Run command inside a shell" checkbox and make the command "cd ; ".
Also note that you can tell Terminal to open your Window Group at startup with Terminal > Preferences > Startup > On startup, open > Window group. There's even a checkbox to set this when saving a new Window Group.
† The "safe" commands include anything listed in /etc/shells, plus: screen, tmux, emacs, vi/vim, nano, pico, and top. You can customize the list with "defaults write com.apple.Terminal RestorableCommands". Set it to an array of strings containing command names or full paths. Some commands have parameters that are "unsafe" to run automatically without user intervention, so by default these commands are only considered "safe" if they do not have any arguments. To make a command safe to run with arguments, add an asterisk, e.g., "top *" is in the default value for this preference.
You can do what you wish from within Terminal.
If in Terminal preferences (Settings tab) you create a new profile (or copy one with Duplicate Settings), you can then set each profile to run a command on startup (the "Shell" subgroup within the profile).
Then setup your tabs by using the Shell > New Tab menu to create the new tabs from each of the specific profiles that you created for the three different executables.
Then do the Save Window Group to save the group of tabs (and it will save their profiles as well).
I suggest the use if iTerm instead of Terminal. If only because it is more configurable. You can script it, but more important to you is that you can create a bookmark folder (one for each tab) and then "open in tabs" which will give you the behavior you seek.
I suspect you can control commands to be executed too. One of the programs I use creates a single-tab terminal window and arranges to execute a profile-setting script before continuing to the command prompt - the same should be feasible for a multi-tab terminal. The file is a MacOS X properties XML file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>CommandString</key>
<string>. /Applications/IBM/informix/demo/server/profile_settings</string>
<key>FontAntialias</key>
<false/>
<key>RunCommandAsShell</key>
<false/>
<key>ShowShellCommandInTitle</key>
<true/>
<key>TerminalType</key>
<string>xterm</string>
<key>WindowTitle</key>
<string>IDS Command Window</string>
<key>name</key>
<string>IDS Command Window</string>
<key>type</key>
<string>Window Settings</string>
</dict>
</plist>
You can click on it and the terminal window is launched, the profile settings are set, and then you have a command prompt to type at. Presumably, changing the 'dot' command into the 'tail' command of the question would work; it might be that the 'RunCommandAsShell' key set to '<true\>' would replace the normal shell with the command - which is perhaps more appropriate for the question.
Another way of doing this is by using the Elscripto ruby gem: https://github.com/Achillefs/elscripto. It allows yuo to easily specify terminal tabs using a YAML file
Open the tabs you want and set each one up as you wish, i.e. in tab 1, cd /etc, tab 2 cd /bin and so on. Now go to Window > Save Windows as Group. Click the checkbox 'Use window group when Terminal starts' and hey presto!
http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/features/split_panes
"Divide a tab up into multiple panes, each one of which shows a different session. You can slice vertically and horizontally and create any number of panes in any imaginable arrangement."
How to Create Custom iTerm2 Window Arrangements
Create a custom keyboard shortcut to automatically spawn a set of windows and splits with processes running.
With a shortcut cmd+shift+w transform split your window arrangement into 3 panels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg8AT-nds1Q
How do I set up a shell script to execute from the Mac OSX dock? It seems that simply creating a shortcut will open the file in my editor. Is there a flag I need to set somewhere to tell it to run instead of opening it for editing?
You could create a Automator workflow with a single step - "Run Shell Script"
Then File > Save As, and change the File Format to "Application". When you open the application, it will run the Shell Script step, executing the command, exiting after it completes.
The benefit to this is it's really simple to do, and you can very easily get user input (say, selecting a bunch of files), then pass it to the input of the shell script (either to stdin, or as arguments).
(Automator is in your /Applications folder!)
If you don't need a Terminal window, you can make any executable file an Application just by creating a shell script Example and moving it to the filename Example.app/Contents/MacOS/Example. You can place this new application in your dock like any other, and execute it with a click.
NOTE: the name of the app must exactly match the script name. So the top level directory has to be Example.app and the script in the Contents/MacOS subdirectory must be named Example, and the script must be executable.
If you do need to have the terminal window displayed, I don't have a simple solution. You could probably do something with Applescript, but that's not very clean.
On OSX Mavericks:
Create your shell script.
Make your shell script executable:
chmod +x your-shell-script.sh
Rename your script to have a .app suffix:
mv your-shell-script.sh your-shell-script.app
Drag the script to the OSX dock.
Rename your script back to a .sh suffix:
mv your-shell-script.app your-shell-script.sh
Right-click the file in Finder, and click the "Get Info" option.
At the bottom of the window, set the shell script to open with the terminal.
Now when you click on the script in the dock, A terminal window will pop up and execute your script.
Bonus: To get the terminal to close when your script has completed, add exit 0 to the end and change the terminal settings to "close the shell if exited cleanly" like it says to do in this SO answer.
I know this is old but in case it is helpful to others:
If you need to run a script and want the terminal to pop up so you can see the results you can do like Abyss Knight said and change the extension to .command. If you double click on it it will open a terminal window and run.
I however needed this to run from automator or appleScript. So to get this to open a new terminal the command I ran from "run shell script" was "open myShellScript.command" and it opened in a new terminal.
As long as your script is executable and doesn't have any extension you can drag it as-is to the right side (Document side) of the Dock and it will run in a terminal window when clicked instead of opening an editor.
If you want to have an extension (like foo.sh), you can go to the file info window in Finder and change the default application for that particular script from whatever it is (TextEdit, TextMate, whatever default is set on your computer for .sh files) to Terminal. It will then just execute instead of opening in a text editor. Again, you will have to drag it to the right side of the Dock.
In the Script Editor:
do shell script "/full/path/to/your/script -with 'all desired args'"
Save as an application bundle.
As long as all you want to do is get the effect of the script, this will work fine. You won't see STDOUT or STDERR.
I think this thread may be helpful: http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-70973.html
To paraphrase, you can rename it with the .command extension or create an AppleScript to run the shell.
As joe mentioned, creating the shell script and then creating an applescript script to call the shell script, will accomplish this, and is quite handy.
Shell Script
Create your shell script in your favorite text editor, for example:
mono "/Volumes/Media/~Users/me/Software/keepass/keepass.exe"
(this runs the w32 executable, using the mono framework)
Save shell script, for my example "StartKeepass.sh"
Apple Script
Open AppleScript Editor, and call the shell script
do shell script "sh /Volumes/Media/~Users/me/Software/StartKeepass.sh" user name "<enter username here>" password "<Enter password here>" with administrator privileges
do shell script - applescript command to call external shell commands
"sh ...." - this is your shell script (full path) created in step one (you can also run direct commands, I could omit the shell script and just run my mono command here)
user name - declares to applescript you want to run the command as a specific user
"<enter username here> - replace with your username (keeping quotes) ex "josh"
password - declares to applescript your password
"<enter password here>" - replace with your password (keeping quotes) ex "mypass"
with administrative privileges - declares you want to run as an admin
Create Your .APP
save your applescript as filename.scpt, in my case RunKeepass.scpt
save as... your applescript and change the file format to application, resulting in RunKeepass.app in my case
Copy your app file to your apps folder
Exact steps to achieve that in macOS Monterey 12.3
Open Automator
File -> New
Choose Application
Go to Library -> Utilities
Double-click Run Shell Script
Type in whatever command you want to run. For example, try the command to toggle Dark Mode:
osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to not dark mode'
File -> Save
Drag the saved file to the Dock, done!
pip install mac-appify
I had trouble with the accepted solution but this command worked for me.
Install
pip install mac-appify
Run
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/appify ~/bin/webex_start.sh ~/Desktop/webex.app
Adding to Cahan's clear answer ... to open a shell script from the dock without passing any arguments to it, try:
open [name of your script].scpt"
example:
open "//Users/user/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~ScriptEditor2/Documents/myScript.scpt"
Someone wrote...
I just set all files that end in ".sh" to open with Terminal. It works
fine and you don't have to change the name of each shell script you
want to run.