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Start-Process with a macOS application bundle doesn't support arguments

See original GitHub issue

The problem seems related to the fact that macOS .app bundles are directories, not single files.

Steps to reproduce

# On macOS
# This should be the equivalent of:
#      open -a /Applications/Safari.app http://example.org  # or: open -a Safari http://example.org
{ Start-Process /Applications/Safari.app -ArgumentList http://example.org } |
  Should -Not -Throw

Expected behavior

The test should succeed, and Safari should open to http://example.org

Actual behavior

The test fails:

Expected no exception to be thrown, but an exception "The FileName property should not be a directory unless UseShellExecute is set." was thrown from

Note that not passing arguments (omitting -ArgumentList) works as expected

Environment data

PowerShell Core v7.0.0-preview.3 on macOS 10.14.6

Issue Analytics

State:
Created 4 years ago
Reactions:1
Comments:5 (1 by maintainers)

Top GitHub Comments

1reaction

computersarecoolcommented, Feb 15, 2023

Hey @microsoft @satyanadella @PowerShellTeam despite a great bug report from @mklement0 this issue has not been addressed (nor even commented on) by anyone from your team more than three years later. This is exactly the thing that demonstrates that you are not serious about making Powershell actually cross-platform. Please fix the issue or at least comment. Thanks!

0reactions

brunoroque06commented, May 11, 2023

Another workaround:

& '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome' `
    --disable-web-security `
    --new-window http://localhost:4200 `
    --no-first-run `
    --user-data-dir=$env:TMPDIR/webbrowser