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Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour
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Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour


  • Subject: Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour
  • From: Jason Proctor <email@hidden>
  • Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 20:40:33 -0700

thanks for the response.

as you can see from my posts this whole relocation thing has me a bit ticked off. i'm not even that clear on why relocation should happen if the application can be installed in the default location, especially if the package flags indicate that the user can't override it.

for a Java application, it seems that the relocation policy is to go hunting around the disk for other applications which have the same main class, and overwrite the first (?) one it finds. needless to say this isn't the behaviour that anyone wants or should be the default, IMHO. in my case, a user can have multiple copies of the same application, which look and behave differently due to different runtime configurations, and relocation isn't going to play nice with that, to put it mildly.

anyway i turned the relocation thing off in Package Maker (3.0.3 is a *fixed* version....?) and things are behaving themselves now.

the loss of time, installed applications, and hair associated with this situation had me wondering whether i should use a 3rd party installer, like i do on windows. that way, system updates etc won't pull the carpet from under me. well, apart from the other ways ;-)

thanks for all the help, everyone.

j


On Oct 1, 2008, at 1:17 AM, Jason Proctor wrote:
anyone from the Apple package maker or installer teams on this list? state your case. my support for the Mac platform is in question thanks to this situation.

There are bugs with PackageMaker concerning relocatability. PackageMaker 3.0.3 was released recently, with changes to try to fix some of those bugs.


There are workarounds, kludges, other approaches, etc, that could perhaps get your overall problem ("How can I make an installer for my product?") fixed. This mailing list discusses them frequently, and the discussions are archived. Yes, the archives are not exactly well organized. Stephane Sudre started a FAQ -- maybe some people can help him.

Please remember that there are several kinds of Apple people available to developers. There's official, full time, developer tech support (DTS) people, whom you can pay to have your problem addressed, and then there's this mailing list, which has a few Apple employee volunteers, most of whom work on installer products during the day. (I do iLife, iWork, and assorted others.)

Of course, most of the people on the mailing list are software developers and "repackagers" -- those who make automated processes to configure Macs.

I can't give you an answer as to why you should support the Mac platform. If you want a few clues on how to make installers, those I can share.

I'll send an email shortly with a hack to turn of relocation no matter what PackageMaker thinks.

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References: 
 >Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour (From: Jason Proctor <email@hidden>)
 >Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour (From: Bill Coderre <email@hidden>)

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