How to add launch options to an .arm64 executable without using the terminal on MacOS

Question

I would like to know if someone know how to launch an .arm64 executable with a launch option (in this case "+set fs_game ...") without using a terminal ? I know that you can do that in windows configuring the .exe but I don't find an alternative for MacOS.

Answer 1

There's a few workarounds, but no actual feature that'd make this clean or easy.

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If you have a .app bundle, you can redirect through a shell script that appends some arguments. If you have an Info.plist with this:

<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>binary</string>

Then you'll want to change it to:

<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>binary_</string>

And create a Contents/MacOS/binary_ like so:

#!/bin/bash
"$(dirname "$0")/binary" +set fs_game "$@";

And give it a chmod +x.

That'll work no matter how you launch the app, but it will invalidate any existing code signature, so if your app was signed, you'll have to re-sign it.

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If you have a standalone binary or if you can't afford to break the code signature, then basically the only option is to make a separate thing that invokes it the way you want. Write a bash script like so:

#!/bin/bash
open -a path/to/your.app --args +set fs_game;

Give it chmod +x and turn it into a separate app. This will obviously only work when invoked via that separate app, but it works with any kind of binary, and without the need to re-sign anything (and the separate app should only show up in your dock for a split second, then vanish again).