application-bundle.md

Creating an application bundle

In this document we describe how to get from an obb script, say, examples/choice.cljs (see examples) to an application bundle Choice.app.

Copy obb to app.js

First, make a copy of obb like this:

$ cp $(which obb) app.js

Append runner code to app.js

Next, we will modify the global run function to run the choice.cljs script by appending this to app.js:

var app = Application.currentApplication();
app.includeStandardAdditions = true;
const cwd = ObjC.unwrap($(app.pathTo(globalThis).toString()).stringByDeletingLastPathComponent);

globalThis.obbRun = globalThis.run;

globalThis.run=function() {
  var scriptLocation = cwd + "/Choice.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/choice.cljs";
  obbRun([scriptLocation]);
};

You can do this by saving the above in runner.js and then appending it to app.js with:

$ cat runner.js >> app.js

Compile application bundle

Execute the following command:

$ osacompile -l JavaScript -o Choice.app app.js

This will create Choice.app in the current working directory.

Copy obb script into application bundle

Lastly, copy choice.cljs into the application bundle:

$ cp examples/choice.cljs Choice.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts

Run!

Now we are ready to launch the application bundle. Launch Finder:

$ open .

and double click on Choice.app. Choose your favorite fruit!

Quarantine attribute

If you want to distribute this application to other computers, you may have to remove quarantine attribute from it (on the other computers) when it is downloaded it via a browser.

$ sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Choice.app

However, if you obtain the application bundle via a terminal, e.g. using curl, then this seems to bypass the quarantine mechanism. A similar thing may happen if you install it via brew cask install.