Macos – OSX: Add Dock icon for dedicated Terminal command

I've written a small program called jumpapp for exactly this purpose. It lets you use one command to opens a new application the first time you run it, and to switch to the already open window any time you run it after that. As a bonus, if you have multiple windows open for the application, repeatedly running the command will cycle through all the application's windows.

Usage: jumpapp [OPTION]... COMMAND [ARG]...

Jump to (focus) the first open window for an application, if it's running.
Otherwise, launch COMMAND (with opitonal ARGs) to start the application.

Under-the-hood, jumpapp locates application windows using two methods: 1) it gets all running pids for COMMAND and looks for windows with a matching _NET_WM_PID, and 2) it looks for windows with a WM_CLASS that matches COMMAND.

If you want to try it out, it's easy to install from source, or you can install it from my PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkropat/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jumpapp

You are right, this is not an OS X specific question. The answer is found in bash, the standard shell on OS X (also included in most if not all Linux distros).

bash provides a built-in command called bind that can be used to bind a key combination (like AltK) to a command (like ssh foo).

Open Terminal and type:

bind '"\ek":"ssh foo\n"'

This will bind the key combination \ek (in Terminal both AltK and EscK) to the command ssh foo. The \n adds a return.

Now press AltK and ssh foo will be executed (modify ssh foo to your needs).

If you want this key combination to be automatically loaded when starting a Terminal create a file called .inputrc in your home folder:

cd ~
touch .inputrc

and open it:

open -e ~/.inputrc

You will see TextEdit open. Type:

"\ek":"ssh foo\n"

and save it (or use your favorite editor). That's it!

There's much more to it than what I've explained here. I recommend that you have a look to this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4200800/in-bash-how-do-i-bind-a-function-key-to-a-command and check (the rather dry) section READLINE in man bash. Notice that the escape sequence \M-, which in other operating systems is mapped to Alt, doesn't work in Terminal. You need to use \e to bind Alt.

Since escape sequences are terminal emulation dependent I'd like to share the setup I used to test the above command: