programming with passion

So, I packaged up my native looking Mac application in my own Application Bundle.  It was super simple to do.

An application bundle is nothing more than a folder that has been renamed with the extension “.app” and conforms to a certain directory structure.  The directory structure looks like this:

/Contents/
/Contents/Info.plist
/Contents/MacOS/
/Contents/Resources/
/Contents/youricon.icns

The important piece is Info.plist.  It tells the system what to call your bundle and where the executable is located.

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
  <string>test.rb</string>
  <key>CFBundleGetInfoString</key>
  <string>Test</string>
  <key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
  <string>test.icns</string>
  <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
  <string>test</string>
  <key>CFBundleName</key>
  <string>Test Name</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Your application should go in MacOS.  I put my ruby script in the MacOS directory and it could not longer load my resources that were right next to it in that directory.  If I hard code the path to be an absolute path based on where the app is bundled (/Users/jasonxrowland/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS) it works.  I have a feeling, I need to call a Mac specific API to get the resource bundle path.  I’ll figure that out later…

I created the icon using the Icon Composer application included with the Mac.