307463 - nsProcess::init fails for Mac OS X application bundles (foo.app)

Status: NEW

(Core :: XPCOM, defect)

Description

[Jesse Ruderman]

nsProcess::init fails for Mac OS X application bundles.  To use nsProcess to run
a Mac OS X application, I have to dig inside the .app and find the executable
myself.

Comment 1

[Josh Aas]

Attachment: possible fix v1.0

This would probably work. It compiles, but I haven't tested it myself. I'll
leave it up to others to request review if they want once it has been tested.

Comment 2

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

I think we'd want to use Launch Services rather than the old LaunchApplication()
-- LSOpenFSRef(), LSOpenCFURLRef() or LSOpenApplication().

A question I have is which kind of apps nsIProcess should be able to open --
should it inlude command-line tools (/usr/bin/ls) for example?

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

nsIProcess should absolutely be able to open command-line tools. I would argue
really that bundle-launching is out of scope for nsIProcess, but if it can be
added without sacrificing direct executables then I suppose it wouldn't hurt.

Comment 4

[Josh Aas]

For the record, I wasn't out to rewrite the whole thing. I don't really have
time to do that correctly right now. I just wanted to fix this bug.

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

A branch-safe fix before Firefox 2.0 would be nice: using bug 172817's external editor for view-source fails here for Foo.app (and in bug 322865 for Foo.app/Contents/MacOS/foo).

Comment 6

[Stan Shebs]

This bug is a problem for dafizilla, see http://dafizilla.sourceforge.net/viewsourcewith/faq-macosx.php
 for their faq on the bug.

Comment 7

[Christian Höltje]

Any progress on this?  If not, can someone who knows what's going on explain the problem in developer.mozilla.org so that other developers don't fall into this problem too?

Comment 8

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

mass reassigning to nobody.

Comment 9

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

btw: I added a note on this on https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XPCOM_Interface_Reference/nsIProcess#init()

Comment 10

[Christian Höltje]

Thanks Frank Wein.

Unfortunately in FF4beta, nsIFilePicker's filterApps now handles OS-X applications sort-of-correctly now (it won't let you pick files that have the executable bit set -- it only lets you pick .app applications).  So now this is doubly annoying.

Under OS-X you cannot let a user pick an application and then run it with arguments. 

So basically, we've gone backwards -- I will have to screw over all my Mac users and require that they specify the application by typing in the path....and I'll have to figure out a way to execute an .app application.

 -- call me annoyed.

Comment 11

[Christian Höltje]

I opened a bug for nsIFilePicker.filterApps not handling non-app-bundles: bug 617515.

I'm essentially doing this to work around this bug:

/usr/bin/open -a <app-bundle> --args <arguments>