Tip: notify long running terminal jobs via Growl
Sometimes you need to run some script or program that will take a long time.
What I usually do is opening a new window, start the script, and then minimize or send to the back that terminal, leaving a small corner visible to serve as a status. I could glance to the visible corner and look for the prompt to see if had ended.
Now, I use this little super simple script (could also be a bash alias, probably):
#!/bin/sh
#
# Runs script, and prints a notification with growl when it finishes
#
$*
growlnotify -m "Script '$*' completed" -s "Background script notification" &
# --script ends here--
My version is called n, just n. So I can type n update_mini_cpan and have a nice notification when it finishes via Growl.
Test with n ls -la if you want.
