bhanditz / activate

:whale: Activates (brings to front) macOS apps launched directly by executable + a few utility commands

activate

Simple command-line tool to run Mac executables and, if they turn out to be a GUI app, activate them (bring them to front).

Used by itch to run apps isolated on Mac, because:

• open -W Something.app behaves correctly (correct icon in Dock, app activates naturally) but swallows stdout, and cannot be used in conjunction with sandbox-exec
• sandbox-exec requires path to the actual executable (even if it's within an app bundle), so it won't launch GUI applications properly (wrong icon in Dock + app doesn't activate, ie. window stays in background)

activate fixes one of these — still looking into the icon thing.

Also obeys these commands:

• --print-library-paths: print Library paths (like /Users/abc/Library), one per line
• --print-bundle-executable-path /path/to/Foobar.app print executable path (like /path/to/Foobar.app/Contents/MacOS/foobar)

License

activate is released under the MIT license, see LICENSE.txt for details