Re: How to reliably target a helper app that's inside a bundle?
Re: How to reliably target a helper app that's inside a bundle?
- Subject: Re: How to reliably target a helper app that's inside a bundle?
- From: Nathan Vander Wilt <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:32:10 -0700
(sorry for the initial private response...I'll never learn...)
On Oct 19, 2009, at 3:18 PM, Stockly, Ed wrote:
My main application bundles an AppleScript script and scriptable
helper
application.
My worry with doing this is that this still won't help osacompile
find
>"HelperApp" during script compilation. How can I be sure that my
script will
>always compile to the most current HelperApp's scripting
definition? Is there
>a better way to approach this?
This is quite possibly a non-issue. The script does not need to
compile at
runtime and as long as the script can find the helperApp you should
be fine
with "using terms." ("Using terms" helps compile during script
editing)
Unless you see a scenario where you would release an update to the
helperApp
without updating the bundled script at the same time, you should be
fine.
Even if the helperApp were updated; and its scripting definition
changed;
and the script not updated, there still wouldn't be a 'runtime compile
error' but there could be a 'runtime execution error'.
So, if I make sure my "tell" application path is correct, there should
be no risk to hard coding just the helper app name in "using terms
from", so long as I compile it successfully my own machine with
'osacompile -x'?
I could get the path of my HelperApp by either passing it as an
argument to
>the script, or using "path to me". (Is the latter reliable? I know
in many
>contexts relying on the executable path is strongly discouraged.)
"Path to me" is probably the most reliable way to get the path to your
helper app at runtime.
My main app can easily use -[NSBundle pathForResource...] to find the
helper app. From Luther's example (thanks!) it looks like it will be
cleaner just to pass the helper app's path into my script instead of
messing with Finder containers. But it's good to know that this is
considered a safe thing to do.
global theHelperApp
It may not be a good idea to use globals in this kind of script.
Once the
script has finished it will try to store the value of the global and
if it's
distributed on a read-only medium you may give your users unwanted
error
messages. Might be better to pass the value in a local.
Ah yes, it will be good to avoid the script modifying itself. I see
script properties also have somewhat similar behaviour. In this case,
passing it as a parameter is not burdensome.
thanks much,
-natevw
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