Re: [OT] Installation into home directory
Re: [OT] Installation into home directory
- Subject: Re: [OT] Installation into home directory
- From: Thomas Harrington <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 10:36:30 -0600
On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 09:49 AM, Clark S. Cox III wrote:
On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 09:31, Robert Borsuk wrote:
Hi,
Sorry for the off-topic post. I'm lost as to were to find this info
out. I've just finished a preference pane (written in cocoa - does
that qualify for the post) that I want to package up for
installation. I want it to install into
~/Library/PreferencePanes
but when I go use PackageMaker it says that you can't install into a
home directory. According to Apple's documentation concerning
installation, this should be fine if you want your "thing" only
available in the "local" domain. Exactly what I want, only available
for that user.
Anyone have any suggestions? This installation is geared for the
beginner, so I didn't want them dragging and creating folders in
~/Library.
Any help or pointing in the right direction is appreciated.
IMHO, installers should be avoided if at all possible. If your
product is a single entity, that gets installed in a single place,
just put it on a disk image, and let the user drag it to it's final
destination (and put something in the readme about the possible
install locations).
In general I agree, however in the specific case of a preference pane I
think an installer is warranted. It's not like an application, which
can be dragged most anywhere and work. It needs to go in a very
specific location, one that almost certainly doesn't even exist yet.
Telling the user to create ~/Library/PreferencePanes and then drag the
package to it is a recipe for a whole lot of confused users
complaining. As simple as the process sounds, my own experience has
been that something like that is too complex to require.
My suggestions in this case are:
1. First consider whether this is the best location; you might be
better off aiming for /Library/PreferencePanes rather than a
user-specific location.
2. If that's not possible for some reason, you can't do what you want
directly with PackageMaker. However a post-install script may provide
a solution. Use a scheme something like, the installer puts the
software in /private/tmp/, and then your postinstall script (which runs
as the user, and therefore evaluates ~ correctly) creates
~/Library/PreferencePanes and then moves the software into it. Note
that for this to work you must not be requiring authentication in the
installer, since in that case the effective user will be root.
You *might* be able to trick PackageMaker by creating the installer to
target /Library/PreferencePanes, and then manually modifying the .info
file to point to ~. But that seems pretty iffy to me.
--
Tom Harrington
email@hidden
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