Ok... I've been searching for an answer to this for a while and can't seem to find any good examples, so I thought I'd break down and ask.
How can I create a shell file (.command) in OSX that I can just double-click on which:
Opens a new Terminal window
Runs a few commands
... and stays active so I can continue to run other things!
My goal is to setup various environments using individual .command files, which will each set variables and run certain command line tools, and then remain open to manually run other commands. I currently have one like this:
#!/bin/sh
export MY_VAR_A="blah A"
export MY_VAR_B="blah B"
cd /Users/
... and this doesn't work. It just opens a Terminal window with this output:
Last login: Sat Aug 17 12:52:15 on ttys000
unknown60c5470527e4:~ me$ /Users/me/Documents/test.command ; exit;
logout
[Process completed]
Is there a better (or just different) way of accomplishing what I want? Or do I just need to adjust something simple in my current .command file?
Use applescript
tell application "Terminal" to activate
tell application "Terminal"
do script ("ls -l") in window 1
do script ("cd /Users/test/Music/iTunes/") in window 1
do script ("ls -l") in window 1
end tell
Save apple script as application bundle.
Related
I have a tiny Bash script that executes ffmpeg and a touch command on an input file. I use this to recompress video files from my camera. I would like to be able to right-click files in Finder and run the script on the select file(s), preferably showing the terminal window while executing and closing when done.
How to do this on macOS?
I think this is what you want. I started Automator by pressing ⌘space and starting to type "Automator", hitting ↩ as soon as it guessed correctly. I then created a "Quick Action" that contains this code:
on run {input, parameters}
repeat with theItem in input
set f to POSIX path of theItem
tell application "Terminal"
activate
tell window 1
do script "echo " & f
end tell
end tell
end repeat
end run
and looks like this:
It basically just echos the filename, but you can put ffmpeg commands in there instead.
Why using finder? Or automator? Or going though loops and hoops just to use the GUI?
You have fully-functional bash shell in MacOS, so save time and hassle with the below one-liner.
Assuming you need to run your script for all *.mpeg files in the folder.
Try this:
ls *mpeg | xargs <your_script_name>
You will see the execution output in the same terminal window.
I routinely open a lot of Terminal windows each with an ssh session. To streamline the process I have a series of shell scripts that look like this:
#!/bin/sh
osascript <<EOS
tell application "Terminal"
activate
do script "set_background_color salmon; ssh alan#demo.znyx.com"
end tell
EOS
This works. I can either execute the script from a shell prompt or click it in the Finder window. (To do this the file name suffix is .command instead of .sh)
The problem is that when I execute it from Finder, I end up with a dead window ("Process Completed") behind the window I intended to open. Is there any way to get rid of it or not have it open in the first place?
UPDATE:
The solution in this other question results in dialog boxes appearing that provide confirm/review/cancel options. This is undesirable.
When you double-click a .command file, the file is passed to Terminal and Terminal creates a window and executes the commands within it. The commands in your .command file use AppleScript to tell Terminal to run a command in yet another window.
Why not remove the middle man and just put the ultimate commands you want to run — set_background_color salmon; ssh alan#demo.znyx.com — in the .command file? Drop that stuff with running an AppleScript. In other words, the contents of your .command file should just be:
set_background_color salmon
ssh alan#demo.znyx.com
Alternatively, you could take the AppleScript from your .command file (the part between <<EOS and EOS), put it into Script Editor.app, and save it as an applet.
I have a script that is run from an application (in my case macvim) that performs a certain command in an available Terminal window or opens a new window if terminal is not used
However, if the terminal is open and it has something running in window 1 (e.g. vim), the script just put the command into the buffer.
Is there a way to check whether window 1 has a running application in it?
Here is the script
#!/usr/bin/osascript
tell application "Terminal"
if (count of windows) is 0 then
do script "ls"
else
#how do I check that window 1 doesn't have a running application?
do script "ls" in window 1
end if
end tell
Ok, answering my own question. This can be done with
if window 1 is busy then
I'm trying to create a launcher for node.js scripts (so that I can run the scripts by clicking on their file icons instead of launching them from the terminal.) How is this usually done? I'd prefer if I could simply run a script in the terminal by clicking on its icon.
I tried writing a shell script to launch another script in the same folder, but it doesn't show the node.js script's command line output for some reason:
#!/bin/bash
echo -n "Enter a node.js script to run > "
read text
node "$text"
I now know that you're looking for an Ubuntu solution, but in case someone is interested in an OS X solution, here goes:
Open Automator.
Create a new application.
Add an AppleScript action
Paste the following code:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Terminal"
repeat with f in input
do script "node " & quoted form of (POSIX path of f)
end repeat
activate
end tell
end run
Save the application.
In Finder, control-click any *.js file and select Open With > Other ..., pick the new application and check 'Always Open With.'
From then on, whenever you open a *.js file, it will open in a new Terminal window that will stay open after node finishes running; add ; exit to the command string above to close automatically (possibly adding read -sn 1 first to wait for a keystroke first.)
i use this to start my node scripts on debian in the terminal
#!/usr/bin/env sh
dir=$(dirname $0)
script="$dir/path_to_your_server.js"
echo "node $script"
Is there a way to close a Terminal window from within a shell script? I have a .command file that should just get out of the way once it's done.
Using exit 0 will cleanly terminate the script.
Whether Terminal window stays open is user-configurable. The default is to always stay open. To change this:
Terminal.app > Preferences > Profiles > Shell
- "When the shell exists:"
> Close if the shell exited cleanly
- "Ask before closing:"
(•) Never
-- OR --
(•) Only if there are....
When "Close if shell exited cleanly" is used, the script will close the window if the exit result is 0, which is the default if nothing went wrong.
Since you don't want to delete all Terminal windows, first change the name of your window from "Terminal" to something else:
echo -n -e "\033]0;My Window Name\007"
Then at the end of the script, use:
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to close (every window whose name contains "My Window Name")' &
You can use apple script to quit the terminal app. Add the following to your script -
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to quit'
This will give you a popup confirming to close the app. You can disable this in Terminal preferences.
Alternatively, you can also use killall command to quit the app. The following would work just as well.
killall Terminal
Note:
Just as a side note, you can freely add the above commands to your script and it would work as you want. However, there are few caveats. First being you will limit the ability of your script to work on different boxes. Secondly, it would be safer to use nohup so that any commands that are currently running won't quit due to quitting of the Terminal app.
This works for me:
#!/bin/sh
{your script here}
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to close (every window whose name contains ".command")' &
exit
This will work for closing just your windows opened with a .command file but leave things already running in other terminal windows. I know that I almost always have either sass or grunt watch something so I don't want to quit terminal totally.
closeWindow() {
/usr/bin/osascript << _OSACLOSE_
tell application "Terminal"
close (every window whose name contains "YourScriptName")
end tell
delay 0.3
tell application "System Events" to click UI element "Close" of sheet 1 of window 1 of application process "Terminal"
_OSACLOSE_
}
This will close the Terminal window for your script and keep any other Terminal windows open as long as their window titles don't match. For it to work Terminal will have to be added to the list of applications permitted to use the Accessibility framework. You can also cycle through Terminal windows with a repeat command and close every window x that contains a UI element "Close" on sheet 1.
I find the best solution for this is to use Automator to create a true OSX application which will work the same way regardless of how your system is configured. You can have the Automator run your shell script, or you can embed the shell script itself in Automator.
Here is how you do it:
Run Automator (in Applications).
Choose "New Document" and when it
asks "Choose a type for your document" choose "Application"
In the
left panel, select "Utilities" then "Run Shell Script".
Type in your
script commands in the workflow item in the right panel. You can either call another
shell script, or just put your commands in their directly.
Save the
Application, which will be a full-fledged Mac App. You can even
cut-and-paste icons from other apps to give your script some
personality.
#!/bin/bash -x
{your script here}
. exit 0
kill -9 $PPID
you can also create a shortcut for your script:
cp yourscript.sh ~/bin/yourshortcutnamewhateveryouwant
then type
yourshortcutnamewhateveryouwant
will run whatever is writen into script at any directory.