Re: How to run a GNAT program without starting a terminal session

[Jerry <list_email@icloud.com>]

On Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 11:27:14 PM UTC-7, Jeffrey R. Carter wrote:
> On 07/17/2018 11:10 PM, Jerry wrote:
> > On Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 9:20:58 AM UTC-7, Jeffrey R. Carter wrote:
> >>
> >> I don't know how much MacOS is like Linux, but with the latter, if I create a
> >> menu entry for my program, there's a check box "Run in terminal". If I leave
> >> that unchecked, I don't get a terminal window.
> > 
> > This sounds interesting but I think I'm missing some context. What do you mean by "create a menu entry for my program" and where is the mentioned check box? Are you referring to GPS? If so, what switch does GPS change to make this happen?
> 
> No, this is part of the Linux desktop. In my case, I'm running Xubuntu. The task 
> bar (by default at the top of the screen) has a menu button that opens a menu 
> that lets you run programs. You can edit the menu, adding and removing menu 
> items. Existing menu items may be modified. The "Run in terminal" check box is 
> available when adding and editing menu items.
> 
> The menu items are technically "Launchers", things that launch programs. I think 
> you can also have launchers not in the menu, such as on the desktop, but I've 
> never used that.
> 
> Xubuntu uses the XFCE desktop; other flavors of Linux use other desktops, but 
> most have something similar. Since MacOS, like Linux, is Yet Another Version of 
> Unix (YAVU) with a graphical desktop, it probably has something similar.
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Carter
> "When Bell Labs were invited to evaluate C against the DoD requirements
> [for Ada], they said that there was no chance of C meeting the
> requirements of readability, safety, etc. for which we were striving,
> and that it should not even be on the list of evaluated languages."
> William Whitaker
> 116

Thank you for that explanation. macOS has a dock to which you can drag application files or document files or whatever, which sounds like a similar feature. However there is no option to tell an Ada executable to not use the terminal. The macOS file manager, called "Finder," identifies the executable as  "Unix executable" and defaults the parent application as Terminal.app, the macOS terminal program. That parent can be changed but the weird thing is the OS treats it as a file to be opened by another program. I can't see how to get around this. So whether I double-click the icon or launch it from the dock (the same thing, really), it opens the terminal. Also, when I tried to embed the Ada executable in an Applescript, it appeared to run (waiting the noted length of time specified by the Beep() commands) but nothing actually happened--no beeps to be heard.

Jerry