Don't store stuff in the application bundle - as you've found, it
won't work if the Applicaiotns folder is write-protected or it's
on a CD or mounted over the network. Put stuff in one of the
"Library/Application Support" folders instead, or, if it's not
much, use the java.util.prefs API which will put stuff in your
~Library/Preferences folder. Personally, I hate the hidden-files-
in-the -home-folder thing.
Using the java.util.prefs mecanism is easy and efficient... until
you have to have your app de-install properly in a portable way.
My apps have to run on Linux, Windows and Mac. The Unix
$HOME/.apprc hack is the only way I have found that allows me to
get the user to wipe the app completely from the HD (with
file.delete()). How do you erase the Windows registry entry, the
Linux $HOME/.java/whatever and the Mac $HOME/Library/Preferences/
app without conditional code for each platform? Maybe you can but
I have found out how. If I would, I certainly would adopt the
prefs immediately!
The Java Preferences API is designed to be platform-agnostic. How
it's implemented depends on the underlying JVM. In Linux, it
results in a .java directory in the user's home and various
subdirectories (for user preferences). In Windows, it goes into
the registry. But in Mac OS X, it's contained entirely in a single
file, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.java.util.prefs.plist.
Simply removing this file is not wise, of course, as it contains
all preferences at the user level (and I don't know where system-
level preferences get placed, never having tried it, but I wouldn't
be surprised if it's in /Library/Preferences by a similar name).
You can avoid this problem by making your preferences node name have
more than three levels. So, for instance, com.foo.thing goes into the
single preferences files, but com.foo,bar.thing goes into its own
plist file of the same name. How they came up with a scheme as weird
as this is anyone's guess.
Jerry
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