njr 3.0

launch 1.1 is out. I started working on it back in March, but after rewriting most of the launching logic only to find out that the feature I was implementing (command-line arguments) didn’t work because of an Apple bug, I got a bit disheartened. Finally, some email prodding from Peter Hosey, the Intel mini I got last week at school (thanks to my advisor), and good old-fashioned burnout after getting back from Portland caused me to finish it up.

Changes in this version:

• -L: send “launch” (ascr/noop) event to app, bypasses automatic opening of untitled document, etc.
• -o: pass command-line arguments (still broken)
• display content type ID (UTI)
• display architecture of Mach-O files
• switched to new LSOpen APIs (now requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later)
• switched to new date formatting APIs (the old ones are deprecated)
• for compatibility with open, take app path as argument to -a
• Universal Binary, compatible with Intel Macs

Sample output demonstrating some of the new features:

% launch -f /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib: document
        type: ''        creator: ''
        architecture: PowerPC, PowerPC 64-bit, Intel 80x86, Intel x86-64
        kind: Unix Executable File
        content type ID: com.apple.mach-o-dylib
        data fork size: 7.62 MB on disk (7983880 bytes used)
        created: 9/29/06 6:50:49 PM
        modified: 9/29/06 6:50:49 PM
        accessed: 10/30/06 5:19:11 AM [only updated by Mac OS X]
        backed up: 12/31/03 7:00:00 PM

Now to crawl back into my hole and attempt to finish this paper…

5:22 AM | Computing, macOS