Command line tool to launch applications, will first search $PATH and then .app bundles and .AppDir directories in various directories, and will show launch errors in the GUI. Filer, Dock, and other applications are supposed to use launch to launch applications. It can also be invoked from the command line.

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

In general, launch shows error messages that would otherwise get printed to stderr (and hence be invisible for GUI users) in a dialog box.

Some of the default error messages are less then user friendly, and do not give any clues to the user on how the situation can be resolved:

Hence, launch can handle certain types of error messages and provide more useful information:

It is also possible to get additional information, e.g., from the package manager:

It would even be conceivable that the dialog just asks the user for confirmation to run the suggested command automatically.