Platypus 4.2

May 18th, 2009
Sveinbjorn Thordarson - <sveinbjornt@simnet.is>





What is Platypus?

Platypus is a development tool for creating application wrappers around scripts. In other words, it creates MacOS X applications that execute a script which is bundled within the application. Command line scripts can thus be run transparently from the graphical window environment, integrating seamlessly with the user interface.

Platypus is written in Objective-C / Cocoa and is free, open source software distributed under the terms and conditions of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License which accompanies this document. The source code is available as a seperate download on the Platypus website.

Platypus is at this point a mature, feature-rich and stable application. I have invested considerable effort into developing and extending it in the last six years. That being said, if you find Platypus to be a genuinely useful piece of software I ask you to please consider making a donation to support further development.


How do I use Platypus?

Using Platypus is simple enough. You type in the name you want to assign to the application in the "App Name" field and then locate the shell script via a navigation dialog by pressing the "Select" button (or alternatively, drag the script or type in the path manually). You can then proceed to create the application by pressing the aptly named "Create" button.

Platypus sports a number of sophisticated features that are explained in the Help documentation. You can view help by opening Platypus and selecting "Platypus Help" from the "Help" menu.

The Platypus documentation includes step by step tutorials and explanations of advanced features. Your download should also have included a folder containing some sample scripts to toy around with.

Platypus has a command-line counterpart -- platypus. You can install this command line tool from the Preferences into the default installation location /usr/local/bin/platypus. The man page for the command line tool is available both in the command line and as a PDF document accessible from the Platypus Help menu.


How does Platypus work?

Platypus creates a MacOS X application (.app) bundle that contains an executable file and your script. When this application is launched, the executable file gets the script interpreter and other settings (authentication requirements, output type etc.) from generated configuration files in the Resources folder within the bundle and then executes the script according to those parameters.

Platypus and Platypus-generated applications require Mac OS X 10.4 or later. In order to create Platypus apps that run on previous incarnations of Mac OS X, you must use Platypus 3.4 or earlier.


Current To Do List:

Please get in touch if you have any feature suggestions. Meanwhile, these are the things on the current Platypus roadmap.


Version history

18/05/2009 - Version 4.2

15/05/2009 - Version 4.1

22/6/2008 - Version 4.0

25/07/2006 - Version 3.4

24/02/2006 - Version 3.3

06/05/2005 - Version 3.2

06/05/2005 - Version 3.1

13/01/2005 - Version 3.0

29/11/2004 - Version 2.8

16/11/2004 - Version 2.7

11/10/2004 - Version 2.6

23/08/2004 - Version 2.5

11/08/2004 - Version 2.3

03/05/2004 - Version 2.2

27/04/2004 - Version 2.1

17/02/2004 - Version 2.0

21/11/2003 - Version 1.8

17/11/2003 - Version 1.7

14/08/2003 - Version 1.6

29/07/2003 - Version 1.5 released

18/06/2003 - Version 1.4 released

15/06/2003 - Version 1.3 released

13/06/2003 - Version 1.2 released

11/06/2003 - Version 1.1 released

09/06/2003 - Version 1.0 released



Sveinbjorn Thordarson
http://sveinbjorn.org/software
sveinbjornt@simnet.is