Brizzled

... wherein I bloviate discursively

Brian Clapper, bmc@clapper.org

Wrapping an executable inside a Mac OS X application

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Introduction

I installed Wireshark on my MacBook Pro via MacPorts, because the prebuilt Wireshark package didn’t work on my machine, due to some dynamic library version conflict. However, I still wanted a Wireshark icon I could drop into my dock, to permit single-click launching of Wireshark. Long-time Mac enthusiasts no doubt could wrap a “naked” executable in their sleep, but doing so was a new exercise to me. This article describes what I did. It should work for any executable that isn’t wrapped in a Mac OS X application bundle.

Create an AppleScript application to run the program

Pull up the AppleScript editor (Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor) and enter the following script. Replace /opt/local/bin/wireshark with the full path to whatever executable you want to run.

to run
    do shell script "/opt/local/bin/wireshark"
end run

Then, save the script as an “application bundle”, as shown in the following dialog box (which comes up if you select “File > Save As” from the Script Editor’s menu).

Add an Icon

You can stop here if you want. The application you just saved will run the executable you specified in the script, and you can drag that application to the dock. However, it’s much nicer if there’s an application-specific icon. So, assuming you’ve already downloaded a PNG or some other image, here’s how to create an icon.

Convert your Image to an Icon

Your final icon will be 128x128 pixels. It’s not absolutely necessary to scale your image to that dimension, but doing so gives you more control over how the scaled image looks. In any case, once you have the image ready, bring up the Icon Composer, which you’ll find in /Developer/Application/Utilities. Drag your image into each of the boxes in the second column. In the top three rows, you will be asked about a 1-bit mask. (See below.) Select “Extract Mask” in all cases.

When you’re done, save the resulting icon to a file.

Convert the Icon to a Resource File

Download and install the open source Icns2Rsrc utility. Once its installed, run it, open the icon file you created above, and save the result as a resource file.

Change the Application’s Icon

The simplest way to change the application’s icon is:

  • Right click on the icon resource file, and select Get Info.
  • Right click on your wrapped application, and select Get Info.
  • In the info window for the icon file, click on the small icon in the upper left. Then press Command-C to copy it to the clipboard.
  • In the info window for the application, select its small icon, then press Command-V to paste the new icon.

That’s all there is to it.

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