Best way to create an .app (apart from symlinking)

[memeplex]

Hi all,

the official recommendation is to symlink:

ln -s /usr/local/opt/emacs-plus@28/Emacs.app /Applications

so my question here may seem redundant. But the reason I'm asking is that a symlink won't appear in Spotlight.

Other alternatives I explored are:

• Create an Alias. Better, but it still appears with low priority at the bottom of Spotlight, inside Other category.
• Create a shell script app with Automator. Puts an absurd gear icon on the systray.
• Create an app with Automator. Better, but the gear is there during launch.
• Copy the app package from /usr/local/opt to /Applications. Some space duplication, extra manual update step.
• Move the app package instead of copying it. No duplication, still extra step, don't know how well it plays with brew upgrades.

What do you think? Is it worth providing a cask install?

Best regards,
Carlos

[d12frosted]

Create an Alias. Better, but it still appears with low priority at the bottom of Spotlight, inside Other category.

This should be the same as creating alias. Or am I missing something?

What do you think? Is it worth providing a cask install?

See #41

In short, I am not planning to invest my time in brew cask. So unless someone contributes, it is not going to happen :)

There are several reasons for me not willing to work on that: (1) that's not how I start Emacs anyways, (2) over years of maintaining emacs-plus I become too tired of brew ecosystem and (3) brew doesn't like when someone provides installation options in their formulas (if cask is akin to bottles in terms of options support, then cask is useless for emacs-plus).

[memeplex]

Create an Alias. Better, but it still appears with low priority at the

bottom of Spotlight, inside Other category. This should be the same as creating alias. Or am I missing something?

Alias is a macOS thing, more like a direct access in Windows. Spotlight seems to like aliases more than symlinks but still less than proper app packages. Symlinks won't even appear while aliases are shown at the bottom. What do you think? Is it worth providing a cask install?

See #41 <#41> In short, I am not planning to invest my time in brew cask. So unless someone contributes, it is not going to happen :)

Ok, no worries, no big deal. Thank you for taking the time to answer.

…

[d12frosted]

Alias is a macOS thing

Indeed, they are different. For some reason I thought they are both the same 😅

What do you think? Is it worth providing a cask install?
Ok, no worries, no big deal. Thank you for taking the time to answer.

Don't want to confuse nor discourage anyone 😸 Just wanted to explain why I am not willing to do that by myself, but I will gladly accept contributions. And if someone wants to bite this bullet, just let me know, so I can assist and provide all the information I have.

[memeplex]

Here is a very interesting albeit inconclusive discussion about these issues Homebrew/legacy-homebrew#4635. It seems like I had more or less exhausted the possibilities above. There is no clear cut solution and there is this gulf between apps that live in /usr/local and apps that are binary and can be installed in /Applications, but nothing that can be built from sources, put a part in /usr/local and still expose the GUI in /Applications. Not the best state of affairs but that's the situation. Moreover, it seems that Spotlight does read symlinks, but that /usr is hidden (and /opt isn't) and that's the problem, but more recent version of macOS won't let you change the visibility of /usr.