open XiEditor from the command line

[cmyr]

We'd like this eventually. In the interim, I currently have a teeny bash script at /usr/local/bin/xi:

#! /bin/sh
open -a XiEditor $@

This requires XiEditor to be installed somewhere, like /Applications. You can also replace XiEditor with a path to the app bundle.

edit: simplified script

[vlovich]

Are you saying eventually you want a terminal front-end or just the ability to invoke the Gui from the command-line? If it's the latter we can just package your script into the .app & on startup check for /usr/local/bin/xi - if missing copy it there.

[cmyr]

@vlovich Right, I'm talking about essentially packaging this script; I had the idea that it might make sense to add various options, but that can be future work. I'm not sure how best we would go about installing this; we don't necessarily know the path to the XiEditor.app package. There's probably a way to figure this out, I don't really know much about the mac app install process...

[srigsby]

perhaps not useful but this is the alias I use for "opening XiEditor from the [cmd] line":

alias xi="open -a $HOME/xi-mac/build/Release/XiEditor.app"

[WillCraig]

I wanted to make a more detailed set of instructions for idiots like myself (Who took 4 hours to get this to work)
type open .profile in the terminal, put this in the .profile file

alias xi ="open /path/to/xieditor.app"

type source .profile after saving the text file

(*You can change the name of the alias to anything you want.

[vlovich]

This is typically done on OSX by bundling the script into the .app & then offering an option to deploy it into /usr/local/bin if it's not present. Would be happy to accept a PR that does this.

[OberstKrueger]

Absent a smarter method of finding the location of XiEditor.app, the "/Applications" portion of the script can be left off. By default, "open -a" will search both /Applications and ~/Applications, and while I imagine most people will put it in the root Applications, there might be some who put it in the user Applications folder.

[jansol]

In fact it's even smarter: it will remember the location of the .app if it has been launched before (which it has to be in #242) so it doesn't even have to be in Applications.

[jansol]

There's a menu item for installing the helper script mentioned in the OP now.