What is the correct way to alias applications in OS X through bash?

Question

In my ~/.bashrc, I have several aliases like:

alias emacs='/Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs'
alias octave='/Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave'
alias wine='/Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/bin/wine'
alias simion='wine "/Users/hpek/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMION 8.0/simion.exe"'
alias inkscape='wine "/Users/hpek/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Inkscape/inkscape.exe"'

I do not think that this is the right way to do it. The aliases does not work from within bash scripts, and when installing something through brew or apt-get, it does not create an alias like this.

What is the correct way to do this?

Answer 1

Aliases don't work in shell script by design. Otherwise e.g. alias rm='rm -i' will break most shell scripts.

To enable them anyway, set the expand_aliases shell option.

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You can create softlinks for these executables in a directory on your $PATH:

ln -s /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs /usr/bin/aquamacs

Then just type the new command name, e.g. aquamacs, to run them.

This will allow use of these commands independent of your shell.

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Note that for regular OS X applications, a non-blocking way to open them is open -a ProgramName, e.g. open -a Aquamacs. It uses Launch Services' program database (the one e.g. providing the selection of programs for opening a certain file with a non-default editor) and knows where the applications are installed.

Answer 2

That is the right way to do it, just for a different value of "it" to what you want to achieve. (alias is just for interactive use, pretty much.)

The way to open an app bundle on the Mac is to use open -a ${appname}, so you could / should replace your emacs alias with alias emacs='open -a aquamacs', and your inkscape with open -a wine '/Users/hpek/.wine/...'.

The way that you have a directly executable emacs binary, though, is to have something named literally that on your $PATH. I tend toward tiny scripts:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/open -a octave "$@"

That opens the application the "mac" way, passes all the command line arguments through it, and is executable from anything including other processes.

If you only care about the shell, though, shell functions are more "normal" than aliases, in that they can be triggered in more circumstances in bash:

function octave() { /Applications/Octave.app/.../bin/octave "$@"; }
function octave() { open -a octave "$@"; }