Platypus 4.4

July 25th, 2010
Sveinbjorn Thordarson - <sveinbjornt@simnet.is>





What is Platypus?

Platypus is a developer tool for creating application wrappers around scripts. In other words, it creates Mac OS X applications that execute a bundled script. 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. 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 development tool. I have invested considerable effort into developing and extending it over the last seven years. That being said, if you find Platypus to be a 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 your 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 detail in the documentation. You can view it by opening Platypus and selecting "Platypus Documentation" 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 interface 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 from the terminal and as a PDF document accessible from the Platypus Help menu.


How does Platypus work?

Platypus creates a Mac OS 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. Script output can then be presented to the end-user in a variety of ways.

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

17/08/2010 - Version 4.4

25/07/2010 - Version 4.3

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