Port Application Issues (Launching Issues)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 27, 2020, at 18:25, Riccardo Mottola wrote:

> However, only native Cocoa apps wil install an .app bundle inside the MacPorts folder. E.g. emacs, gimp do that if they are compiled in the "+quartz" variant. Other apps if not Mac native will have their own launch method which will not be as straight-forward.

There are some ports that install app bundles in the /Applications/MacPorts folder even though they are not native Cocoa apps. These app bundles are intended as a convenience that can be used to launch applications from the Finder, Dock, LaunchPad, Spotlight, etc., but other than that they don't behave like normal Mac apps. For example, dragging a document icon to it won't open it into the application, the application icon may continue bouncing in the Dock after the app is launched, clicking the icon in the Dock after the app is launched won't switch to the app, etc.

Usually though, software that is not a native Mac Cocoa app will not have an app bundle in /Applications/MacPorts and you'll usually run it from the terminal. The "port contents" command tells you what was installed and where so that you know what to run.