The application /Applications/Atom.app cannot be opened because its executable is missing.

[jasonlagaac]

Hi I'm getting the error when running atom from the command line in OSX

ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.1
BuildVersion: 15B42

Atom Version: 1.1.0

[benogle]

cc @zcbenz @joshaber

[alvinsj]

did you try Atom Menu > Install Shell Commands? probably broken after updating to El Capitan

[jasonlagaac]

@alvinsj This is a fresh install with shell commands installed.

[joshaber]

Only when running from the command line? Does it launch fine from Finder?

[jasonlagaac]

@joshaber It launches fine in Finder and Spotlight.

[joshaber]

What's the output of running:

$ ls -la $(which atom)

[timothysu]

Hi I get this error on OS X 10.11.2 and Atom 1.3.3 when using "atom" from zsh within tmux. "atom" works fine when directly launched from my zsh terminal w/o tmux.

[joshaber]

Is it possible tmux is doing something with PATH?

[lee-dohm]

@timothysu would you mind opening a new Issue? I want to make sure that your Issue gets handled and if @jasonlagaac isn't using tmux, it sounds like a different problem.

@jasonlagaac are you no longer running into this problem?

[robertwahler]

A common method for starting CLI apps on OSX is to use open -a

open -a Atom README.txt

This works for me 9 times out of 10 and then will fail with the same error message from the OP. Restarting iTerm/Fish/Tmux fixes the issue for me.

This isn't just an Atom issue. I have the same issue intermittently with open -a Firefox 'http://example.com'

[bnmnetp]

I'm getting the same problem under 10.11.4 beta with atom 1.5.3. Also using fish and tmux. However the old reattach-to-user-namespace trick works fine so I've created an alias to run

If you don't know about the reattach-to-user-namespace it is installable with brew. And you can google it for more details.

function e
    echo "using fish alias to open atom"
        reattach-to-user-namespace atom -n $argv
end

[hovancik]

Have the same problem here. os x 10.11.3.

Atom was installed via brew. Happening now on version 1.5.4, not happening before (I was using atom update feature to get updates).

ls -la $(which atom)
lrwxr-xr-x  1 501  admin  79 Jul  8  2015 /usr/local/bin/atom -> /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/atom/latest/Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/atom.sh

was fixed after terminal restart (iTerm)

[dd1994]

meet the same, fixed after iTerm restart

[dd1994]

opppps can't use it in tmux

[craigiswayne]

I'm having the same issue:
ls -la $(which atom)
lrwxr-xr-x 1 myusername admin 78 Apr 28 23:59 /usr/local/bin/atom -> /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/atom/1.7.2/Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/atom.sh

I installed with homebrew as well....

however if i open atom via command line, it works using either of these methods
atom
open -a Atom

I will glady provide ANY information.

[lee-dohm]

It sounds like this is a problem restricted to Homebrew installations? Is anyone still running into this that is not installing via Homebrew?

Homebrew Casks are installed to /User/[username]/Applications not /Applications, so if you have a copy of Atom.app in /Applications, it is probably broken and should be deleted.

[craigiswayne]

I can verify that Homebrew has been installing into
~/Applications

so this is not the problem.

[lee-dohm]

The title of this Issue specifically mentions a problem with /Applications/Atom.app, so if you are having a problem with an Atom.app installed in another location, please open a new Issue.

[lee-dohm]

@jasonlagaac are you running into this problem anymore?

[lee-dohm]

Closing due to lack of response. If you start running into this Issue again, please feel free to reopen it and give us the new information. Thanks!

[paanvaannd]

@lee-dohm I've just started running into this same issue.

This only happens with tmux but the atom {fileName} and open {filenNme} -a {applicationName} work fine in zsh.

This isn't localized to just Atom; this same error is output whenever I try to open a file using tmux in an application outside iTerm. I'll write to the tmux Git page and open up an issue there since it seems like this is a tmux issue.

Just wanted to let you know in case others contact you with this same issue! I will provide another update once I have (hopefully) resolved the issue after contacting the tmux devs so you can direct them to that issue.

[Pipeliner]

@paanvaannd has this been fixed with newer tmux?
The haven't (yet) occured for me with tmux 2.3

[mshaaban0]

that happens when you force quit atom for some reason, try to restart atom, and iterm/terminal then it should work fine.

[paanvaannd]

@Pipeliner I tried to replicate the issue with the newer version of tmux and running atom {fileName} will now work just fine, but open {fileName} -a {applicationName} works yet results in the following message on occasion:

The window server could not be contacted. open must be run with a user logged in at the console, either as that user or as root.

I'm not sure what causes this message to pop up. Using the open {fileName} -a {applicationName} method with Atom on an HTML file, I get the error and no file or application opening. Using the same method on the same file but with Microsoft Word, I get no error and the application opens the file. Using TextEdit, the application opens the file but I get the error message as well... strange stuff.

[matthewdowns-eb]

I was able to fix this by clicking "Install Shell Commands" in Atom, then restarting iTerm.

[lock]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you can still reproduce this issue in Safe Mode then please open a new issue and fill out the entire issue template to ensure that we have enough information to address your issue. Thanks!