OS X, AppleScript, and CLI
OS X, AppleScript, and CLI
- Subject: OS X, AppleScript, and CLI
- From: Aaron London <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 01:37:16 -0500
I'm working on moving a build environment for OS 9 to OS X. It is primarily in AppleScript with some MacPerl and MPW shell scripts.
I love OS X and would very much like to see it flourish. Yes, if Apple doesn't ultimately implement Terminal.app's dictionary (it's there, but try scripting it) someone must (and I hope, will) roll their own shell/terminal application. One can "do" AppleScript from the command line. Apple has implemented OSA and a compiler at that level, it's the ability to communicate between the BSD subsystem, the Mac OS X layer, and the Classic emulation (if you can call what it does emulation, I find that it takes the legacy OS code knack for crashing and exacerbates the problem) environment.
Most of the scripting additions from the OS 9 build environment break in Classic. OS 9 compiled scripts and applets are supposed to be able to access OS 9 scripting additions, but I haven't found that to be the case. My question is: why even bother to try to continue scripting in Classic when the real power and stability are in OS X? Meanwhile, I really don't have the time to chase down the addition authors and either urge them to carbonize/cocoaize their code or solicit the source code to do the job myself.
Of course, since I have yet to locate a scriptable shell app, I'm unable to port the MacPerl scripts back to their "mother tongue" in the BSD subsystem. MacPerl is great for OS 9, but in Classic it is unacceptably unstable. Running a Perl port on top of an OS emulation, what can one expect anyway? Then there's MPW, which will live out its final days in the throes of Classic compatibility. We are stuck with MPW's limits and can only hope a worthy successor will follow. As an experiment try mounting a superproject, which resides on an AppleTalk volume somewhere on your LAN, in MPW and then unmount that project and mount another. Just watch what happens when MPW, from within Classic, tries to unmount volumes now residing on the OS X desktop.
AppleScript is extremely powerful and useful, but it's implementation so far in OS X pales. I have found many other subtle inconsistencies as well from data type mishandling to unpredictable variable scope behavior to erratic library calls and so forth. The script editor app is just crash happy and will go to the trash as soon as ScriptDebugger or Scripter complete carbonization.
Apple has an opportunity to make it's OS a very important integrator of data and therefore a useful workstation in varied settings, but that all rests on the general release implementation of AppleScript 1.5.x.