cpcalendars

Really simple CLI app to copy Mac OS Calendar.app calendars sources to other location.

Copy the calendar resources from the Mac OS Calendar app to the specified directory, building a pseudo-ICBU file. This file constitutes a comprehensive backup of your calendars.

In the first run it will need to be granted permissions for the Calendars app by System Integrity Protection system.

Install

The recommended installation option is use Homebrew with the command:

brew install bglezseoane/tap/cpcalendars

You can only install the program with Cargo, with the command:

cargo install cpcalendars

Use

The normal use of the tool is very simple. You only need to run:

cpcalendars <destination>

A folder named All Calendars.icbu will saved into <destination>.

Achieve permissions against Mac OS System Integrity Protection

If your current terminal app has Calendars.app access or full disk access and you use cpcalendars since it, the tool will works fine. If you only want to work with cpcalendars since your terminal or since scripts used by you since your terminal, the above is sufficient and the following steps are irrelevant to your use case.

Otherwise, if you want to use the tool since an script routine as launchd agent, the tool is going to fail due to System Integrity Protection.

Mac OS System Integrity Protection block cpcalendars because the tool try to access the protected Calendars.app directories and it doesn't inherit permissions —using it since the terminal, inherit terminal granted ones—. To achieve permissions, you need to run the following command:

open -a '/usr/local/bin/cpcalendars' --args "<tmp_destination>"

When run the above command, a pop up window appear and you can grant access to your calendars to cpcalendars. Do it and the next time the tool will work.

The path /usr/local/bin/cpcalendars could be different if you have installed with Cargo. Any case, you can check it with which cpcalendars.

If your agent only needs to run the tool and no more stuff, you can add the following lines to the agent Info.plist and it will work (after previously indicated first execution):

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      	<string>/usr/local/bin/cpcalendars</string>
      	<string>destination</string>
    </array>

For any reason, to work with the tool since the launchd agent and integrated in a shell script, you need to always run it as open -a '/usr/local/bin/cpcalendars' --args "<destination>" and not directly as a command (e.g. /usr/local/bin/cpcalendars <destination>). I.e., if you use, e.g., the following agent specification...

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      	<string>/Users/You/scripts/script_which_calls_cpcalendars.sh</string>
    </array>

... you need to run cpcalendars as follows:

# 'script_which_calls_cpcalendars.sh'
# ...

open -a '/usr/local/bin/cpcalendars' --args "<destination>"
# And not '/usr/local/bin/cpcalendars <destination>

# ...

When run with open -a, the command don't return an error code if the launched application fails, so in order to integrate this step in a well designed script, the next approach is recommended:

# ...

# Create temporary file to save the output of the 'open' command
TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT=$(mktemp -t open_cpcalendars)

# Run and wait
open -W -a '/usr/local/bin/cpcalendars' \
	--stdout "$TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT" \
	--stderr "$TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT" \
	--args <destination>

# Check and act attending to the process success
if grep -Fxq 'Error' "$TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT" \
	|| ! grep -Fxq 'Process finished successfully.' "$TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT"
then
	>&2 echo "Error using 'cpcalendars'."
	rm "$TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT"
	exit 1 
fi

# Clean
rm "$TMP_OPEN_CPCALENDARS_STDOUT"

# ...

Motivation

On my Mac OS machine I have some scripts that cannot work as agents because it is prevented by System Integrity Protection, which only allows granting permissions to binary programs. That, coupled with the fact that I wanted to learn the Rust language, motivated me to write this simple program in order to have the conflicting step in a compiled program to authorize it and can maintain my script routine working elegantly —and not pseudo-compiling shell scripts inserted them in a compiled language program—. However, at the end of the day cpcalendars is a potentially useful generic purpose program.