On Jun 27, 2007, at 12:43 AM, Duncan Groenewald wrote:
On 27/06/2007, at 1:31 PM, Andre LaBranche wrote:
On Jun 26, 2007, at 3:40 PM, Duncan Groenewald wrote:
I don't understand why you think this is the wrong place ?
This panel contains items such as Web Sharing, File Sharing,
Print Sharing, etc. Why are these any different from Database
Sharing ?
The problem is not so much regarding the service itself, but
rather that the Sharing preference pane is supplied by Apple and
is not intended to be extended by third parties. It's important
to keep vendor-supplied software 'untainted' by third party
modification. How would you distribute your modified version of
Apple's Sharing preference pane. What if Apple changes the
prefpane in such a way that it breaks or disables your
modification? What if your modification breaks the Sharing pref
pane for some users? Your software needs to be protected from
Apple as much as Apple's software needs to be protected from you :)
Creating your own preference pane would give you a greater amount
of flexibility, as well as preserve the important tradition of
separation of site local software from vendor supplied software.
More on this topic can be found here: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
pub/fhs-2.3.html. Both that document and the 'hier' man page make
no reference to the Mac OS X specific directories such as /System
or /Library, but a good general rule is that you should never
install anything into /System (one notable exception is kernel
extensions). Most things that would go in /System can also go in /
Library, and /Library is a valid place for site-local
customizations.
HTH,
-Andre
I just want to add another item to the list so it can be started
and stopped, I don't want to modify the behaviour of their panel
at all.
While I agree that it would be nice to have a generic startup item
enabler / disabler built into the OS, the Sharing preference pane
is not that thing (even though it may look like it), and is still
apple's private property.
I highly recommend using launchd instead of SystemStarter. There's
even a pretty sweet GUI for managing launchd stuff: http://
www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19879/lingon
Lingon might be a good option for managing stuff on your own
systems. If you're aiming for a solution you can distribute to
others, a preference pane is probably still the best bet.
-Andre
I find the concept of "apple's private property" a bit weird if its
going to result in a fragmented desktop experience. Why not simply
publish how to create a new item - can't see it being any different
than any other OS API....
Enough on this anyway - and thanks for the link to Lingon - that's
exactly what I was looking for. I am just surprised that this type
of thing is not provided as standard administration panel..
But hey my Nokia phone connects automagically to my mac... no longer
any need to hunt around for some third party software for this...
Thanks again for your help.
On 26/06/2007, at 3:06 PM, Dan Shoop wrote:
At 9:59 PM +1200 6/23/07, Duncan Groenewald wrote:
Hi, I am trying to create an entry in the System Preferences/
Sharing panel for a database server. I have set the database
up in the ~/Library/StartupItems folder and checked it starts
up and shuts down correctly - all good.
WHat I really want is to create an entry in the above
mentioned preferences panel so that I can easily start and
stop the service.
Any help with how to do this would be appreciated.
The System Preferences / Sharing Panel is probably the wrong
place. What you should consider is writing a Preference Pane.
See the OS X Developer docs.
--
-dhan
------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Dan Shoop
AIM: iWiring
Systems & Networks Architect http://
www.ustsvs.com/
email@hidden http://
www.iwiring.net/
1-714-363-1174
