Re: 10.4: Installing to desktop
Re: 10.4: Installing to desktop
- Subject: Re: 10.4: Installing to desktop
- From: Colin Cornaby <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:06:00 -0800
We have a bunch of artwork that we want to secure with a serial number (and I've explained that the contents of an installer can be easily decompressed), but of course there doesn't seem to be a good place just to install a bunch of files. The team that is running the project wants me to put it on the user desktop, but also wants it to be a user customizable path, and we have to support 10.4.
On Feb 25, 2010, at 1:02 PM, Bill Coderre wrote:
> On Feb 25, 2010, at 10:42 AM, Colin Cornaby wrote:
>> Is there a way via a preflight or something on 10.4 to get the target set to the current user's desktop for an installation? I have an installer where the client wants the user to be able to choose the path, but the path to default to the desktop.
>
>
> No, there's no way to have the installer target directly to the currently running user's desktop. The installer's copying mechanism cannot "glob ~", and preflight and postflight cannot influence the copying mechanism.
>
> I believe that preflight and postflight scripts can find the currently logged in user's home directory by "globbing ~" and the installer sets/maintains the environment variable $USER (which is user name, and you could theoretically call dscl to find out home directories).
>
> So you might think, "Oh, I can install into a temporary location, then move stuff to the desktop later," but this does not handle the case where you want the user to be able to select a different custom location.
>
> Also, installing to a temporary location can have security issues, and you might have to deal with permissions issues (if you install into a non-admin user's desktop, you'd best be sure that the owner/group/permissions are appropriate).
>
> It also doesn't account for the fact that Mac OS X is a multi-user system, and in general, one user does not have access to another's desktop.
>
> So what are you really trying to do? If you want to install an App, you should probably install it in /Applications. If you want to install a bunch of documents, is /Users/shared/ good enough? If not, maybe install there and make an alias to point to it?
>
> (Although it's really a symlink, not an alias, one creates these via unix "ln -s")
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