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Answer 1

+3 A:

An application bundle (a .app file) is actually a bunch of directories. Instead of using 'open' and the .app name, you can actually move in to it and start the actual binary. For instance:

$ cd /Applications/LittleSnapper.app/
$ ls
Contents
$ cd Contents/MacOS/
$ ./LittleSnapper

That is the actual binary that might accept arguments (or not, in LittleSnapper's case).

MathieuK 2009-08-20 21:01:43

The binary accepts arguments, I am sure. I wrote it. Invoking 'open' doesn't allow passing arguments. I am pretty sure about this.And yes, my script is calling 'open binary' directly, not trying to open the bundle.

psychotik 2009-08-20 21:05:45

@psychotik: He's not saying to call "open binary." He's saying to directly execute the binary.

Chuck 2009-08-20 21:22:13

That won't work for me. Directly executing the binary results in it being a child process of my script, which I definitely do not want. Hence, the need to use open/nohup

psychotik 2009-08-20 21:24:58

If it is a shell script, use 'exec' to replace the script process with the actual executable.

Jonathan Leffler 2009-08-20 21:35:09

This is a python script invoking a shell command using os.system(). In any case, 'exec' launches my app as a child process so it's the same issue.

psychotik 2009-08-20 21:52:20

Answer 2

+4 A:

OS X 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 probably could do something kludgey by passing parameters in using environment variables.

Ned Deily 2009-08-20 21:27:59

My kludgey approach is to invoke the executable directly with command line args using nohup - if the environment-vars-kludge less kludgey?

psychotik 2009-08-20 21:31:55

Probably not. If it works for you, go with it. The larger point is that open(1) is the cli equivalent of what happens when a user does a double-click or an "Open" in the Finder and none of those mechanisms support conventional command line arguments.

Ned Deily 2009-08-20 21:52:02

+1: You shouldn't be using command-line arguments for Mac OS X GUI applications.

S.Lott 2009-08-21 01:53:17

Answer 3

A:

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. :)

Paul Irish 2009-09-24 14:08:41

Answer 4

+4 A:

As was mentioned here, the 'open' command in 10.6 now has an 'args' flag, so you can call:

open -n ./AppName.app --args -AppCommandLineArg

John McDonnell 2009-10-18 01:48:04

Answer 5

A:

With applescript:

tell application "Firefox" to activate

Keith 2009-11-09 23:00:46

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Launch an app on OS X with command line

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