Start script on login

Question

I have written a ruby daemon and I would like for it to run when I log in. It is normally run by going to the command line and calling ruby my_ruby_script.rb. How can I start my daemon on login? (Running 10.6 Snow Leopard).

Answer 1

There's an option to add applications etc that need to start at login, you could try writing a shell script or an apple script thing that launches terminal and runs ruby my_ruby_script.rb, or possibly even just add my_ruby_script.rb to this list after adding a #!/bin/env ruby line to the top of that file. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2602?viewlocale=en_US gives precise instructions as to how to add an application to be started at login.

If you need to use AppleScript to actually start a terminal application (I believe this is not the case, but I am not in front of my mac now and hence can't test), just create an applescript file with something like

do shell script "ruby <path>/my_ruby_script.rb"

Hope this helps

Answer 2

As Panda said, add:

#!/bin/env ruby

to the begining of the file, and then you could add a reference to your file inside ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile or even /etc/profile , depending on your needs.

Check this out: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3484429/profile-and-bashrc-doesnt-work-on-my-mac/3484472#3484472