From: Eric Sunshine <ericsunshine@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2025 19:52:14 GMT
Subject: Re: [BUG] gitk assumes availability of `osascript` on macos
Message-ID: <CAPig+cTRYK+5ezmGxz0d1TwMTu1RKy7Xj05CzDE2-i14aUpSAg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <2994140.eGJsNajkDb@alfonse>

On Sat, Sep 20, 2025 at 8:07 AM Robert Scott <lists@humanleg.org.uk> wrote:
> Tiny one here. On macos, gitk (tested 2.50.1) attempts to call `osascript` so
> it can focus/raise the UI. But it fails hard if `osascript` isn't present in
> the $PATH.
>
> There are a number of reasons `osascript` might not be available in a
> particular environment, e.g. if launched from inside a "pure" nix shell, but
> seeing as it's just a quality-of-life feature it would be nice if failures to
> call `osascript` could just be ignored.

A patch[*] was posted to the mailing list years ago which, I believe,
should fix this problem for you. Unfortunately, the patch was never
picked up due to the then-maintainer of Gitk being missing-in-action.
Perhaps the current Gitk maintainer (Cc:'d) will pick up the patch.

[*]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20180724065120.7664-1-sunshine@sunshineco.com/