Why does Appify not work on Tiger?

Question

Why does Appify not work on Tiger?

Why does Appify not work on Tiger or Leopard?

Appify is a script which uses the following to convert a bash script into a compact PPC application.

mkdir -p foo.app/Contents/MacOS

mv foo.sh foo.app/Contents/MacOS/foo

chmod +x foo.app/Contents/MacOS/foo

My test foo.sh file contains:

#!/bin/bash

say ping

I normally get the following on Tiger: "You cannot open the application 'foo.app' because it is not supported on this system" and a similar message on Leopard.

There are many Appify links.

I can sometimes get it working for a while if I modify an established working application but playing with it or rebuilding launch services database stops it working. This does prove that support is available for it even if it is not intended to be used.

I suspect that at some point OS X was changed to require something to be compiled but I have been unable to discover details about the change.

A related post was highjacked by 'rocks' and answers to questions which were not asked. I would like to understand the details of what is happening rather than have a series of fixes I did not ask for.

Mac OS X (10.5.8), on 733 MHz G4+, G3s, Ubuntu on R630

Posted on Aug 14, 2013 4:46 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

83,221 points

Aug 14, 2013 6:12 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Maybe you need to

chmod a+x foo.app/Contents/MacOS/foo.sh

I could be wrong, but I would double check the man pages on the operating system in question.

Also, note, you may need to install the developer tools for the said operating system to get the full functionality out of the Terminal.

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Answer 2

Aug 14, 2013 6:23 AM in response to a brody

I had previously applied chmod +x to just about everything. I have now tried chmod a+x and it has not resolved anything.

I have Developer Tools on my Leopard volume but not the Tiger one.

Have you tried to see if it works on your Mac?

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

83,221 points

Aug 14, 2013 6:42 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

I won't be able to try until next week, when I next have access to my Tiger machine. I would see if installing the developer tools makes a difference.

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Answer 4

Aug 18, 2013 1:43 PM in response to a brody

a brody wrote:

I won't be able to try until next week, when I next have access to my Tiger machine. I would see if installing the developer tools makes a difference.

I got it working. Diagnostics on Tiger very slightly better than Leopard. All the issues were with the bash file:

'say ping' does not work on my Tiger or Leopard it needs to be '/usr/bin/say ping'. Pity this error invoked such a misleading error message - see first post.

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