Return control to bash script when using /usr/bin/open to close SSH tunnel

Question

I want to write a bash script that:

• establishes an SSH tunnel
• launches a local VNC client (vncviewer, the RealVNC viewer in my case)
• closes the SSH tunnel once the vncviewer exits

Best effort so far:

ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 <my IP address> -N &
pid=$!
/Applications/VNC\ Viewer.app/Contents/MacOS/vncviewer localhost:5900
kill "$pid"

I couldn't get it to work with open, though. This works, but the script exits leaving an open tunnel behind:

ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 <my IP address> -N -f sleep 10
open -a 'VNC Viewer' --args localhost:5900 

Using open seems to be more intuitive and user friendly.

Answer 1

From man open:

 -W  Causes open to wait until the applications it opens (or that were already open) have exited. 

So unless VNC Viewer is just a launcher, running

ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 <my IP address> -N &
pid=$!
sleep 5
open -W -a 'VNC Viewer' --args localhost:5900
kill "$pid"

should do the trick.