I can launch an xterm from the command line (or a program, via a system call) like so:
/usr/X11/bin/xterm -fg SkyBlue -bg black -e myscript
That will launch an xterm with blue text and a black background, and run an arbitrary script inside it.
My question: How do I do the equivalent with Terminal.app?
You can open an app by bundle id too, and give other parameters.
If there's an executable script test.sh in the current directory, the following command will open and run it in Terminal.app
open -b com.apple.terminal test.sh
The only down side that I can find is that Terminal doesn't appear to inherit your current environment, so you'll have to arrange another way to pass parameters through to the script that you want to run. I guess building the script on the fly to embed the parameters would be one approach (taking into account the security implications of course...)
Assuming you already have the colors you want in one of your Terminal profiles, here's what I came up with (with some help from Juha's answer and from this Serverfault answer).
Update:
On reflection, I think this echo business is too complicated. It turns out you can use osascript to make an executable AppleScript file with a shebang line:
#!/usr/bin/osascript
on run argv
if length of argv is equal to 0
set command to ""
else
set command to item 1 of argv
end if
if length of argv is greater than 1
set profile to item 2 of argv
runWithProfile(command, profile)
else
runSimple(command)
end if
end run
on runSimple(command)
tell application "Terminal"
activate
set newTab to do script(command)
end tell
return newTab
end runSimple
on runWithProfile(command, profile)
set newTab to runSimple(command)
tell application "Terminal" to set current settings of newTab to (first settings set whose name is profile)
end runWithProfile
Save that as term.scpt, make it executable with chmod +x, and use it the same way as below, e.g. term.scpt "emacs -nw" "Red Sands".
Original answer:
Assuming we save the script below as term.sh...
#!/bin/sh
echo '
on run argv
if length of argv is equal to 0
set command to ""
else
set command to item 1 of argv
end if
if length of argv is greater than 1
set profile to item 2 of argv
runWithProfile(command, profile)
else
runSimple(command)
end if
end run
on runSimple(command)
tell application "Terminal"
activate
set newTab to do script(command)
end tell
return newTab
end runSimple
on runWithProfile(command, profile)
set newTab to runSimple(command)
tell application "Terminal" to set current settings of newTab to (first settings set whose name is profile)
end runWithProfile
' | osascript - "$@" > /dev/null
...it can be invoked as follows:
term.sh
term.sh COMMAND
term.sh "emacs -nw" to open a new terminal and run (non-windowed) emacsterm.sh COMMAND PROFILE
term.sh "emacs -nw" "Red Sands" to open a new terminal and run (non-windowed) emacs with the Red Sands profile.If you invoke it with a bad command name, it'll still open the window and set the profile, but you'll get bash's error message in the new window.
If you invoke it with a bad profile name, the window will still open and the command will still execute but the window will stick with the default profile and you'll get an error message (to stderr wherever you launched it) along the lines of
525:601: execution error: Terminal got an error: Can’t get settings set 1 whose name = "elvis". Invalid index. (-1719)
The invocation is slightly hacky, and could probably be improved if I took the time to learn getopt (e.g., something like term.sh -p profile -e command would be better and would, for instance, allow you to easily open a new terminal in the specified profile without invoking a command). And I also wouldn't be surprised if there are ways to screw it up with complex quoting. But it works for most purposes.
Almost all (every?) osx program can be launched from command line using:
appName.app/Contents/MacOS/command
For terminal the command is:
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal
You can use the autocomplete (tab) or ls to find the correct filenames. ".app" is basically a folder.
To change the colors and run a script... I think you cannot do it with shell scripts as Terminal does not accept arguments ("Terminal myScript.sh" does not launch myScript). With iTerm this works.
Workaround is to use applescript (wrapped in a shell script):
#!/bin/sh
osascript -e '
tell application "Terminal"
activate
tell window 1
do script "sleep 5; exit"
set background color to {0, 11111, 11111}
set win_id to id
end tell
set w_ids to (id of every window)
repeat while w_ids contains win_id
delay 1
set w_ids to (id of every window)
end repeat
end tell'
Ok, now it should behave exactly the same as the xterm example. The drawback is the constant polling of the window ids (which is bad programming).
edit: A bit more elegant applescript would use the 'busy' property of Terminal. I will leave the original code as is works for a general program (not just terminal).
tell application "Terminal"
tell window 1
do script "sleep 2"
set background color to {0, 11111, 11111}
repeat while busy
delay 1
end repeat
close
end tell
end tell
Also for perfectly correct program, one should check that whether the terminal is running or not. It affects the number of windows opened. So, this should be run first (again a nasty looking hack, that I will edit later as I find a working solution).
tell application "System Events"
if (count (processes whose name is "Terminal")) is 0 then
tell application "Terminal"
tell window 1
close
end tell
end tell
end if
end tell
br,
Juha
You can also go into terminal GUI, completely configure the options to your heart's content, and export them to a ".terminal" file, and/or group the configurations into a Window Group and export that to a terminal file "myGroup.terminal". Then
open myGroup.terminal
will open the terminal(s) at once, with all your settings and startup commands as configured.
you can launch terminal with the following command, not sure how to specify colors:
open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/
The answer from @david-moles above works but run the terminal and command in ~ rather the current working directory where term was launched. This variation adds a cd command.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# based on answer by @david-moles in
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4404242/programmatically-launch-terminal-app-with-a-specified-command-and-custom-colors
echo "
on run argv
if length of argv is equal to 0
set command to \"\"
else
set command to item 1 of argv
end if
set command to \"cd '"$PWD"' ;\" & command
if length of argv is greater than 1
set profile to item 2 of argv
runWithProfile(command, profile)
else
runSimple(command)
end if
end run
on runSimple(command)
tell application \"Terminal\"
activate
set newTab to do script(command)
end tell
return newTab
end runSimple
on runWithProfile(command, profile)
set newTab to runSimple(command)
tell application \"Terminal\" to set current settings of newTab to (first settings set whose name is profile)
end runWithProfile
" | osascript - "$@" > /dev/null
There may be a way to set PWD this with applescript.
Note: When I use this, I sometimes two Terminal windows, one a shell running in ~ and a second which runs the cd command and command from argv[1]. Seems to happen if Terminal is not already running; perhaps it is opening old state (even tho I had no open terminals when I closed it).
