Real time NSTask output to NSTextView with Swift

Since macOS 10.7, there's also the readabilityHandler property on NSPipe which you can use to set a callback for when new data is available:

let task = NSTask()

task.launchPath = "/bin/sh"
task.arguments = ["-c", "echo 1 ; sleep 1 ; echo 2 ; sleep 1 ; echo 3 ; sleep 1 ; echo 4"]

let pipe = NSPipe()
task.standardOutput = pipe
let outHandle = pipe.fileHandleForReading

outHandle.readabilityHandler = { pipe in
    if let line = String(data: pipe.availableData, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding) {
        // Update your view with the new text here
        print("New ouput: \(line)")
    } else {
        print("Error decoding data: \(pipe.availableData)")
    }
}

task.launch()

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this, as it's a lot simpler.

(See Patrick F.'s answer for an update to Swift 3/4.)

You can read asynchronously from a pipe, using notifications. Here is a simple example demonstrating how it works, hopefully that helps you to get started:

let task = NSTask()
task.launchPath = "/bin/sh"
task.arguments = ["-c", "echo 1 ; sleep 1 ; echo 2 ; sleep 1 ; echo 3 ; sleep 1 ; echo 4"]

let pipe = NSPipe()
task.standardOutput = pipe
let outHandle = pipe.fileHandleForReading
outHandle.waitForDataInBackgroundAndNotify()

var obs1 : NSObjectProtocol!
obs1 = NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(NSFileHandleDataAvailableNotification,
    object: outHandle, queue: nil) {  notification -> Void in
        let data = outHandle.availableData
        if data.length > 0 {
            if let str = NSString(data: data, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding) {
                print("got output: \(str)")
            }
            outHandle.waitForDataInBackgroundAndNotify()
        } else {
            print("EOF on stdout from process")
            NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(obs1)
        }
}

var obs2 : NSObjectProtocol!
obs2 = NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(NSTaskDidTerminateNotification,
    object: task, queue: nil) { notification -> Void in
        print("terminated")
        NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(obs2)
}

task.launch()

Instead of print("got output: \(str)") you can append the received string to your text view.

The above code assumes that a runloop is active (which is the case in a default Cocoa application).