Flag -url and starter script (optional support for node.js)

[eerne]

Hi, I'm really excited about MacGap and the lightweight direction you are taking. I'd like to discuss 2 feature requests that would allow a MacGap application developer to ship a custom binary (server) and spawn MacGap as child process:

• ability to optionally configure the startup script (not directly start the .app/Content/MacOS/MacGab binary)
• support for a "-url" flag, to specify the default location instead of "public/index.html"?

[maccman]

Yes - this sort of question has been asked before (i.e. integrating Node). I'm sorry, I'm not keen on that - my aim is to keep MacGap light and simple. I don't think you should be running Node servers on the client.

[eerne]

I didn't ask for integrating node

[maccman]

Yes, regardless of whether it's Node or not, I'd rather not run servers on the client. :)

[subtleGradient]

Cf. https://github.com/subtleGradient/Appify-UI this project (of mine) uses an older build of PhoneGap Mac with the simplest possible tweaks necessary to run arbitrary stuff before activating the PhoneGap binary. At Facebook we are using this technique to write some custom dev tools using node.js and PhoneGap Mac on the client. I plan to update this to use MacGap soon.

MacGap itself likely doesn't need to allow many changes to make this possible (if any). If any are necessary I will send a pull request. Thanks! MacGap looks very good!

[subtleGradient]

The only change that I made to PhoneGap Mac for Appify-UI was allowing the default URL to be set in the defaults/preferences system. That minimal feature shouldn't be objectionable to anyone.

[maccman]

@subtleGradient agreed - you should be able to override this. Love to see a patch for that.

[subtleGradient]

I hope to get around to adding this patch one of these days. This is how I did it once before…

Cf. subtleGradient/callback-mac@b46c12b