Re: updaters
Re: updaters
- Subject: Re: updaters
- From: Karl Kuehn <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:23:27 -0800
On Feb 18, 2009, at 3:01 PM, Dodger wrote:
I've been thinking about this. Is there a way Apple could disallow
these
arbitrary installer scripts and still support the scenarios that
seem to
require them? Perhaps this warrants a separate thread.
If you mean disallow any external scripts, well, there's a reason
they're allowed: to allow for things they haven't foreseen. I know my
problem would be very unlikely to be handled in the packagemaker app,
for instance (i.e. applying a morph target to an Alias Wavefront Maya
object file and saving out the results). If Apple foresaw that need,
they probably *still* wouldn't include the possibility because it
would be so rare.
I agree completely that there is no way that Apple could get rid
scripts from installers. I think that the better way of making both
the installer-writers and the system-admins happy would be to have a
way for installer script to tell the installer program that they had
touched specific files so that the installer could then communicate
that appropriately (through .bom's, etc). And vitally important:
document that as an important thing.
What I would want in the perfect installer program has been in my
mind much recently, and since nobody asked here are a few things that
I would want:
- Ability to sandbox/chroot the installer scripts so that it only used
and wrote to the target volume
- The same as above, but for the javascript sections of the installer
- An explicit mechanism for licensing/registration systems. I am
thinking about something like a plugin system, but with the ability to
pass the licensing/registration information from the command line for
command-line installs. It would also allow for a GUI that would
provide the information to the Plugin the same way. I don't want Apple
to mess around with trying to do this themselves, but rather to
provide a consistent interface for package-developers to do so.
- Better documentation and examples of how to write all of the
javascript components now allowed (documentation on this is really
hard to find)
- Apple emphasizing to installer writers (both internal and external)
that their installers will not always be used by consumers on a single
machine that they are logged into. (InstaDMG has become the lens I
view this thorough)
And on the really-out-there field:
- Redo the conversion to XAR and this time don't just wrap a CPIO
inside a XAR but rather extend XAR to handle all of the cases the CPIO
handles. With some careful work this would allow for tools like
Radmind to work directly with .pkg's rather than replace them.
--
Karl Kuehn
email@hidden
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Installer-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden