Re: Cached distribution contents in PM 3?
Re: Cached distribution contents in PM 3?
- Subject: Re: Cached distribution contents in PM 3?
- From: John Williams <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 22:10:46 -0400
Thanks for the suggestions Andrew.
I've actually been creating installers with PM for a couple years now but am only now upgrading from V2 to V3. I must say the new version is giving me a lot more headaches than the earlier version. I'm running into crashes, preinstall & postinstall scripts that worked fine previously don't anymore (especially frustrating is the inability to make symbolic links in the preinstall phase consistently. I still haven't figured out why it fails when a package is part of a distribution, but works fine when the package runs by itself).
What I've found that works is to delete the *-contents.xml file from within the pmdoc bundle before building. This ensures the resulting package uses exactly what I have in my staging folder rather than what it recorded when I created the pmdoc. I just added this to our ant task that does the builds.
I've also given up editing in the raw mode. I just pull out TextWrangler or Oxygen and edit the underlying XML files directly.
The biggest frustration is that everything was working fine under the previous versions of PM.
I'm sure I'll get it all going again but it's taking far longer to upgrade my projects than I thought it would.
John
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Andrew Peckover
<email@hidden> wrote:
Hi John,
I've puzzled over this too. Actually I've never used earlier versions and I just recently started using installers on Mac, so I'm a "newbie".
But yes, going from raw to normal mode very often crashes it, especially when trying to configure choices and subchoices. In my opinion, this program is quite buggy.
The crashes are often cause by legitimate errors I've made in the code (although sometimes I will in fact get an error message (error at line such and such) rather than a crash). But other crashes happen even when no errors are made in the code.
I have a specific set of steps I follow to prevent the crashes when making an installer. Maybe this will help you.
First, I will have gone into raw editing mode and already created my distribution script how I want it. Then I'll save the script in a text file. Then to make the installer, I:
1. Open the PackageMaker document.
2. Type the title of the distribution.
3. Add packages by dragging them from finder.
4. ***here's the key - save and close the PackageMaker document***
5. Make a duplicate of it, in case it crashes or whatever, then I'll have a backup.
6. Open the PackageMaker document, immediately go to raw editing mode without making any changes in the UI.
7. Paste in my distribution script, then return to normal editing mode.
8. I can now do some other things in normal editing mode, such as setting permissions and so on.
One reason I've had to use the raw editing mode is because, strangely, there doesn't seem to be a way to configure subchoices in normal mode properly, and I use subchoices alot.
-----------
I'm not sure about your first question (caching the contents etc.). Not sure if this is what you mean, but when you look at the contents tab it will show you all the files that have been in your source, even if you have removed them since. I think the list of folders and files there is strictly involved with setting the permissions of the files - since if I uncheck any of the items, they are still included in my distribution. (i.e. checking or unchecking files doesn't affect whether they are included in my installer.) But I could be wrong about that. Anyways, just to be on the safe side, if I change my source files, I usually do this:
1. Set the source folder to a different location. That is, the "Install" field in the Configuration tab, I just set to a bogus directory.
2. Save and close the pmdoc.
3. re-open and set the correct directory. Unfortunately, I then need to reset the permissions and file filters.
Now there is also "snapshot" feature to investigate if you want, under the package menu - maybe it will help you
(in my testing, it didn't work presumably because my source is not on my system drive, and it also crashed the program)
Andrew
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Williams" <email@hidden>
To: <email@hidden>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 8:57 AM
Subject: Cached distribution contents in PM 3?
Hi
I'm converting our PackageMaker v2 installers to use PM 3. I have
several packages that I then bundle into 1 distribution. It seems that
PackageMaker caches the contents of the packages into the distribution
at the time the package is added. If I remove files from my staging
area and rebuild the individual package the distribution does not seem
to reflect those changes.
Am I missing something?
Also, I notice a lot of crashes when switching from Raw Editing Mode
to the Normal Editing Mode. Is this a known problem?
And 1 more question: Is it possible in the PM 3 UI to rearrange the
choices in the distribution?
Thanks
--
John Williams
Sr Software Engineer
Typefi Systems Pty Ltd
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John Williams
Sr Software Engineer
Typefi Systems Pty Ltd
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