MacOS – Creating a script that will execute a program and if it exits without crashing, will run it again

applescriptcommand linemacosterminal

I've already asked this question in the UNIx exchange but I was told to ask here also about AppleScripts if the standard shell does not work.

I require a script that will open an application. Wait for it to exit, if the application exited gracefully (I.E: did not crash) relaunch it. Otherwise, keep the crash report open and exit the script. I'd like this script to run until I quit it manually.

So far the following has been suggested:

while open -W /path/to/application.app
do
    :
done

But this opens the application and then either on crash or exit will automatically run it again. I assume this is because open regardless of waiting or not will terminate with a normal 0 exit code. Unless of course open crashes but in this case it will not.

Any assistance with this is appreciated.

Thanks.

Best Answer

To keep restarting the job on succesful exit You can use launchd on OSX. For this You have to prepare *.plist file in order to "tell" launchd how to behave. To restart application on succesfull exit please look at KeepAlive -> SuccessfulExit key (more info: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/launchd.plist.5.html). To start your job, You'll need to start it via launchctl command, for example:

launchctl load path/to/file.plist

To stop it:

launchctl unload path/to/file.plist

More informations about launchctl/launchd programming here:

http://alvinalexander.com/mac-os-x/launchd-examples-launchd-plist-file-examples-mac

http://launchd.info

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Of course, replace firstCommand with whichever command you actually want to run, and so on. For whatever reason, Terminal doesn't really have an accessible way to create new tabs through AppleScript, so the long, hacky looking line in the middle just tells Terminal to type ⌘T to open that new tab, and then new commands will execute in it.

You can run this AppleScript as is, or use it in Automator to create a new service, which you can then execute from anywhere using a keyboard shortcut if you'd like.

Extras - If you want to fire some script/command in the newly opened terminal session, you can refer this

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