Change default name of shell-only app from Atom to e.g. AtomShell

[natevw]

I'm switching a project over from node-webkit to give atom-shell a good try. When updating the documentation on the atom branch, I noticed that the instructions I gave other developers for launching the project don't really work with Atom shell.

On OS X, we used to be able to simply call open -n -a node-webkit . in terminal to open the app. But changing this to open -n -a Atom . does not work — it opens the Atom Editor instead. The app identifier in the shell releases is the same as the Editor app itself! Can this please be changed?

[soh1988]

You can change the binary name in the MacOS folder and update the Info.plist with the new Executable File name.

[natevw]

If this is something that can't change in your release process, I think it's easiest just to leave the documentation as "replace this part of the path with whatever version/location you just downloaded" than "now patch the executable you downloaded without breaking it, each time you download it". I'm trying to make this easier on people checking out this project in the future, not harder 😃

[erisdev]

It's worse than just the app name: the bundle id is the same too. com.github.atom. For all practical purposes, OS X has no way at all to tell them apart.

[natevw]

Yes, I ended up doing something like this as part of all the bits it takes to build an app:

if [ "$(uname)" == "Darwin" ]; then
    cp -R ~/Downloads/atom-shell-v0.17.2-darwin-x64/Atom.app $TARGET
    mv .tmp $TARGET/Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app
    PLIST="`pwd`/$TARGET/Atom.app/Contents/Info.plist"      # must provide absolute path (i.e start with slash?) to modify a file directly
    defaults write $PLIST CFBundleName "$APP_NAME"
    defaults write $PLIST CFBundleDisplayName "$APP_NAME"
    defaults write $PLIST CFBundleIdentifier "com.example.my-app"
    defaults write $PLIST CFBundleIconFile "app/app.icns"
    mv $TARGET/Atom.app "$TARGET/$APP_NAME.app"
elif [ "$(expr substr $(uname -s) 1 5)" == "Linux" ]; then
    echo "Not implemented!"
elif [ "$(expr substr $(uname -s) 1 10)" == "MINGW32_NT" ]; then
    mkdir $TARGET/atom-shell
    cp -R ~/Downloads/atom-shell-v0.17.2-win32-ia32/* $TARGET/atom-shell
    mv .tmp $TARGET/atom-shell/resources/app
    RCEDIT="`echo ~/Downloads/rcedit.exe`"       # from https://github.com/atom/rcedit/releases/download/v0.1.0/rcedit.exe
    EXEFILE="$TARGET/atom-shell/atom.exe"
    $RCEDIT $EXEFILE --set-icon app.ico
    $RCEDIT $EXEFILE --set-version-string CompanyName "Example LLC"
    $RCEDIT $EXEFILE --set-version-string FileDescription "$APP_NAME"
    $RCEDIT $EXEFILE --set-version-string ProductName "$APP_NAME"
    #mv $TARGET/atom-shell/atom.exe $TARGET/atom-shell/myapp.exe
    mv $TARGET/atom-shell "$TARGET/$APP_NAME"
fi

(This leaves the app named "atom.exe" on Windows as a workaround for #713 right now, but otherwise makes my app become a lot more like my app instead of someone else's text editor ;-)

[anaisbetts]

@natevw You should check out the build process at https://github.com/atom/atom-shell-starter, it has solved all of these problems

[zcbenz]

Atom Shell is now renamed to Electron.