Unable to find system modules on macOS

[sameersismail]

Versions:

# macOS 13.0.1
$ uname -a
Darwin macbook.local 22.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 22.1.0

$ /Applications/ActivityWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/aw-server --version
v0.12.2b1

---

Problem:

Running aw-qt through Finder it's unable to find any system modules:

2023-01-30 11:29:45 [INFO ]: Started aw-qt...  (aw_qt.main:53)
2023-01-30 11:29:45 [INFO ]: Found 4 bundled modules  (aw_qt.manager:85)
2023-01-30 11:29:45 [INFO ]: Found 0 system modules  (aw_qt.manager:119)

However, running through the command line it is able to:

$ /Applications/ActivityWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/aw-qt
[...]
2023-01-30 11:32:29 [INFO ]: Started aw-qt...  (aw_qt.main:53)
2023-01-30 11:32:29 [INFO ]: Found 4 bundled modules  (aw_qt.manager:85)
2023-01-30 11:32:29 [INFO ]: Found 2 system modules  (aw_qt.manager:119)

[TimeToBuildBob]

This is a PATH issue when launching from Finder. When aw-qt starts via Finder (double-clicking the .app), it doesn't inherit your shell's PATH, so it can't find the bundled module executables that live inside the .app bundle.

Workaround: Launch from terminal instead:

/Applications/ActivityWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/aw-qt

Root cause: The Module.discover() method in aw-qt searches for module executables in sys.path and the system PATH. When launched from Finder, the PATH is minimal (/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin), missing the app bundle's own directory.

Fix: aw-qt should add its own bundle directory to the search path regardless of how it's launched. The bundled modules are at Contents/MacOS/ inside the .app — manager.py should include this path explicitly. This is straightforward to fix in the discover() method.

PR #121 (auto-restart for crashed modules) doesn't address this specific issue, but a follow-up PR could add the bundle path fix.

[TimeToBuildBob]

Fix submitted in #125.

The root cause was that _discover_modules_system() only uses os.get_exec_path() to find AW modules, but when aw-qt is launched from Finder the PATH is minimal (/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin) and excludes common install directories.

The fix adds /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin, and ~/.local/bin to the search list on macOS, with a deduplication guard so paths already in PATH aren't searched twice. The existing _discover_modules_bundled() already had Darwin-specific handling — this brings parity to the system module path.