Need to find out the details of an application? Check here…

Folks,

There’s a MOSX command line tool, that many people are unaware of called “file”.  This application will give you information about what architectures applications will run on, and if it’s not an application, it will attempt to identify what the file is.

For example:

dhcp105-53:~ Ben$ file test.pdf
test.pdf: PDF document, version 1.3
dhcp105-53:~ Ben$ file test.pdf
test.pdf: PDF document, version 1.3

dhcp105-53:MacOS Ben$ file iChat
iChat: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
iChat (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
iChat (for architecture i386):	Mach-O executable i386





What does all of this mean?
Message Meaning
architecture ppc 32 bit PowerPC Executable
architecture ppc64 64 bit PowerPC Executable
architecture i386 32 bit Bit Intel executable
architecture x86_64 64 bit Bit Intel executable

The caveat is for applications, you need to actually use file on the executable file, not on the Application Bundle.

So, you will need to open the bundle, and transverse to Contents > MacOS, so for example, for iChat:

cd /Applications/iChat.app/Contents/MacOS