Hi,
This is a rather technical question that in itself is only indirectly related
to MacPorts:
What are the current differences in terms of what applications can or cannot do
if they're built as traditional executable files ("BSD Utilities" in Apple
speak) vs. as/in an app bundle?
>From what I remember, it used to be pretty clear-cut: any application wanting
>to put up a usable GUI basically had to be built as an app bundle ... unless
>you were called Adobe Illustrator (or comparable) in which case you could be
>built like a PEF executable or something of the sort.
Evidently a "BSD Utility" cannot have an Info.plist, but there are ways to set
up that Info Dictionary programmatically (I've been doing that with the
LSUIElement flag in numerous Qt/KDE daemons). Other than that, I'm not noticing
any difference in the behaviour of applications built either the one or the
other way, at least not when I launch them from a terminal or fork()/exec() .
I'm asking in the context of designing a cross-platform "launch-a-process"
function which provides the most natural opening behaviour of the started
application. In particular, something that does not cause the new application
to open its windows behind those of the current process, so unlike what happens
when you use system() or fork()/exec() to start an application on OS X (instead
of LaunchServices).
>From what I can tell, one needs to use LaunchServices in order to start an
>application "A" the way it would start from the Finder, i.e. in the front
>layer unless you bring another application to the front after starting
>application "A".
However, LaunchServices will not launch all applications directly; it certainly
uses Terminal.app as a delegate when starting a shell script. I am less sure
about GUI applications built as BSD utilities; I have the impression that the
"open" command will usually launch those directly ... but then again that
command probably doesn't use LaunchServices in its most basic form.
This is probably the main question I'm looking to see answered: when/how can I
use LaunchServices so it doesn't use a delegate application like Terminal.app ?
A related question: I've managed to write an AppleScript that brings a started
application to the foreground from the calling application, using the "System
Events" library. What SDK would I be looking for to see if I can do the same
without using AppleScript?
Thanks,
René
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