Re: Adding commandline batch mode to Cocoa app

FROM : Tom Harrington
DATE : Sat Mar 22 23:36:40 2008

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Carsten <<email_removed>> wrote:
>  However, image processing apps can benefit from batch modes, and
>  although some things can be nicely handled by an in-app batch manager,
>  the ideal would be to also allow the application to be run from the
>  commandline, as a traditional unix utility.
>
>  Given the .app bundle format of Cocoa apps, I don't quite see how I
>  would do this. In main(), I have added an if contingent on the
>  existence of commandline parameters (which can be refined in case Mac
>  OS X uses these to launch drag-n-drop scenarios, something which I
>  don't know yet), which doesn't load the GUI in case the app has been
>  launched in commandline batch mode, but the executable is deep inside
>  the .app bundle...
>
>  What is the traditional Mac OS X/Cocoa way of handling such a
>  scenario, or is it simply not do it like this, and to force the user
>  to use an in-app batch manager?


You could just use the executable in the .app bundle, though it would
lead to some very long command lines.  For example you can run
TextEdit with "/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit".

One approach that some apps take is to have a separate command-line
tool which could be installed in /usr/local/bin or some other more
normal-seeming place.  With this approach you'd probably have a
regular drag-install app bundle with a menu item to optionally install
the command-line tool.  Depending on your architecture the
command-line tool could be as simple as a symbolic link to the main
bundle's binary.

Depending on your requirements, you might consider whether the
batch-mode processing would be better implemented as an Automator
action.

--
Tom Harrington
<email_removed>
AIM: atomicbird1