[1.1.0] OS X 10.10.3 with Java 7+: App.open("Mail") doesn't work anymore --- also for some other Mac apps --- fixed 2015-04-25+

[Zed]

---- fixed 2015-04-25+ (using osascript tell app to activate)

----------- workaround
... for situations, where SikuliX App features crash, do not work as expected or are not available at all:
run AppleScript snippets inline, that do the job:
runScript("applescript tell application ...")

... would internally run the given snippet using osascript.

An example for this specific Mail situation: comment #3

... and using Java 7 seems to help

---------------------------------------------------------

For some reason I can no longer launch applications using App.open anymore with the latest night build.
It executes the code but the application does not actually launch.
ie,

App.open("/Applications/Mail.app")

[RaiMan (raimund-hocke)]

seems to be a specific problem with 10.10.3 and Mail.app, since App.open() generally works.

I tried other ways, to start Mail from SikuliX or from terminal: all not working.

the only, that worked in the Terminal was:
osascript -e "tell application \"Mail\" to activate"

(cannot be issued currently with the run() feature - working on that)

once Mail is running, App.close() and App.focus() still work.

[RaiMan (raimund-hocke)]

tested some variants - this is the only that worked:

cmd = ['osascript', '/Users/raimundhocke/astest.txt']
print run(cmd)

the file /Users/raimundhocke/astest.txt contains the AppleScript command:
tell application "Mail" to activate

using the direct osascript -e script mode does not work and returns the error -10810 (not documented)
cmd = ['osascript', '-e', 'tell application "Mail" to activate']

BTW: does not work either for any not open (Apple) application (like Safari, Calculator, ...)
... but Google Chrome opens

[RaiMan (raimund-hocke)]

I added some support for inline run of AppleScript snippets, which might help in such situations.

In this case, this works to open Mail:

# version to run a multiline AppleScript script
cmd = """
applescript
tell application "Mail" to activate
display alert "Mail should have started"
"""
if 0 != runScript(cmd):
  popup("did not work\nsee error message")
  exit(1)

wait(3); App.close("Mail"); wait(3)

# version to run a one-line AppleScript script
if 0 != runScript('applescript tell application "Mail" to activate'):
  popup("did not work\nsee error message")

# to get the textual output of the command
textResult = RunTime.get().getLastCommandResult()

[Zed (zh2eou)]

Hmm was this due to a change in how App.open is implemented? I pulled up an older version from a few months ago (the nightly build from 11-14-2014) and that seems to still work on 10.10.3.

[RaiMan (raimund-hocke)]

That is interesting.
I did not change anything in the code since then or even before. That all is still the same native C++ stuff as with X-1.0 RC3.
The only difference surely is, that the current respective module (libMacUtil.dylib) was built on (I guess ;-) 10.9.

Since I still have a 10.7 running, I will check the situation from there.