OS X

I'm fairly new to Apple's OS X, so some of these tips may seem quite obvious to long-time users, I needed somewhere to put tips to remind me. Most of my work is still on Windows and Linux, but I'm finding that OS X is a pleasant mix of both and then some, all wrapped in a great design. This reminder page will start pretty small, but should grow as I learn stuff.

Creating a "launcher" for a shell script : Simply change the extension of the shell script to .command and you'll be able to run it by double-clicking on the icon (it'll open a terminal window and run the script, and then close the terminal window when the script is done).

Where do applications keep their stuff? : In the ~/Library directory. To get to it, type command+shift+g then type ~/Library or in the finder, hold down option as you select the go menu.

To delete a file or folder from the keyboard : command+delete

To better customize mail : to work with gmail (or google apps) I followed the advice in this link

Command Line Tools for Xcode : I'm still learning Xcode, but I do miss having the easy-to-access gcc compiling options that were available from the Linux command-line. Now they're available; info here.

Xcode 4 binary locations : Xcode 4 creates binaries that you build (by default - this can be changed) in a subdirectory off of here: ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/

merge pdf's using preview : The detailed version is here, but basically, you need to drag a new pdf on top of an existing one to merge them (and then save the new pdf afterwards)

create a text document inside the folder in finder : This is something I miss from Windows and Linux. There are many add-on solutions, but I found this one to be the simplest (it's an applescript script that adds a button to your finder that allows the creation of a blank document in the current folder).