For those that don't know, it is possible to compile Transmission from source with a handy little binary called transmission-remote, which is a command line interface to Transmission. It's useful because it allows shell scripts (or shell scripts packaged as AppleScript or Automator applications) to interact with Transmission to allow for all kinds of useful possibilities such as automatically verifying data on completion, customising alerts, or even allowing other applications to interact with Transmission. I'm now using it for several of these reasons, plus with AppleScript/Automator you can also create simple droplets that you can throw a torrent file onto to add it to Transmission with custom settings and other handy little things.
However, for some reason this binary isn't included by default with Transmission. What I was proposing therefore was that transmission-remote be included as standard, as it would remove the hassle of having to build from source yourself for every new version, and allow us a lot more freedom in scripting Transmission "out of the box", especially since there is no plan for true AppleScript support (which isn't really needed anyway but only if transmission-remote is available instead).
But the ticket I created has been closed for various weak reasons which I've tried to argue against, but my arguments have apparently fallen on deaf ears, so I want to cover them here:
- One argument against was that it would result in lots of extra support requests, but I don't believe that's true at all. Simply adding transmission-remote isn't going to result in some huge upsurge in users trying, and failing, to use it; it is after all still a command line utility so no-one unfamiliar is going to want to go fooling around with it unless they really feel that they need to. Even then there are useful code snippets here on the forums, or even full scripts that someone could simply download and use which would now simply work, rather than what currently happens which is that they will silently fail when transmission-remote isn't found.
- The other argument against was added complexity, but really I don't think that's the case at all either. At worst all that transmission-remote is is a file that just sits within the .app bundle and does nothing until used; if a user doesn't need it, then it doesn't harm Transmission in any way, but for users that do need it it removes an unnecessary hassle to build from source (which only currently supports OS 10.8 right now anyway).
- We already have the call script option for download completion, which already requires some knowledge of scripts and how to use them, which is at least as complex as transmission-remote is. However, without transmission-remote there are a bunch of useful things we currently can't do with such scripts like automatically verify downloaded torrents. Not everyone that wants to add features using a script needs to know about transmission-remote, as most users can handle downloading a script, saving it somewhere and pointing Transmission's call script feature to it to run; forum users are also very helpful about providing useful snippets for people to use, but currently these scripts simply won't work.
- There is no cost to including transmission-remote as it's a two-second change to build settings for official releases, and if you don't use it then it's just a tiny extra file within the Transmission app bundle.