create application bundles on demand

[kowey]

Currently, getting graphical applications to work on MacOS X involves a bit of manual steps after "cabal install", particularly if the applications happen to be command line oriented at the same time (ie. a GUI that supports being called from the command line).

The blog post below offers a solution which seems to work for wxHaskell (Setup.hs files also attached). Perhaps it can be generalised somehow so that users can just tell Cabal they want an application bundle?

Duncan requested Apple docs on application bundles. I haven't read it yet, but maybe this will help?

• Blog post:  http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2009/09/cabal-installing-graphical-apps-on.html
• Bundle Programming Guide:  http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFBundles/Introduction/Introduction.html

[kowey]

addendum to Setup.hs example for fancy bundles

[duncan]

So the tricky thing here is who decides if it's going to be an app bundle or not.

Presumably it is the package author who knows that the app is actually a GUI app and so it needs to do something funky on different systems.

[kowey]

revised Setup.hs (and addendum) with chmod u+x

[dankna]

See  http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/cabal-devel/2011-May/007545.html