Auto Restart Precessing Apps

broenni

in Library and Tool Development • 1 year ago

Hello

I was just gathering some code snippets for a script that will watch if a certain application is running and will automatically restart it in case of a crash or if the user is quitting it.

This might me useful if you show a processing app in an exhibition.

Of course there should be no bugs and it shouldn't crash, but you never know for sure ;-)

All you need is a launcher.plist...

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<dict>
<string>com.restart.launcher</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string> /Applications/Opera.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<false/>
</dict/>

and a terminal command to start it.

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launchctl load "${0%/*}/com.restart.launcher.plist"

This works well. There is only one problem.

The file of the application to be watched is in the package contents: Contents > MacOS

Processing Applications don't have that file in the package content or rather an file called "JavaApplicationStub".

Unfortunately it doesn't work with this file.

Any suggestions?

I know that there is a App called Lingon that may do the job but my script also does a bunch of other stuff that Lingon won't.

Replies(3)

evsc

Re: Auto Restart Precessing Apps

1 year ago

Hey Broenni,

I am in need of such a smart cron-job as well.

Something that restarts an app, once it crashes.

I found the location of JavaApplicationStub via this blog post.

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<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.restart.launcher</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/USERNAME/Documents/Processing/APPLICATIONFOLDER/application.macosx/APPLICATIONNAME.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<false/>
</dict>

When i launch the plist through the terminal, it starts my application.

Launch via Terminal (in location of com.restart.launcher.plist file)

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launchctl load com.restart.launcher.plist

Unlaunch via Terminal

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launchctl unload com.restart.launcher.plist

When i kill my application on purpose (hit escape), it automatically restarts. So far so good. Yet, if my application crashes and freezes, nothing happens. I've put in a test-crash into my application, that leads to an IndexOutOfBounds Exception crash. When i trigger this, the application freezes and remains frozen.

Any idea how launchctl would recognize that the application is frozen instead of just not-running?

Eva

broenni

Re: Auto Restart Precessing Apps

1 year ago

Hi Eva

Thanks for that JavaApplicationStub hint. Nice that this works.

I don't yet have a solution for the freeze issue. But I'm interested in that too and constantly looking for solutions.

Makio135

Re: Auto Restart Precessing Apps

1 year ago

You can have a look at SIKULI http://sikuli.org/ and write a script that watch if your app is running/freezing/crashing and restart it

http://makio.free.fr/

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