Re: Installing to users Home folder using Packages
Re: Installing to users Home folder using Packages
- Subject: Re: Installing to users Home folder using Packages
- From: Steve Stockman <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 07:48:08 -0700
- Acceptlanguage: en-US
- Thread-topic: Installing to users Home folder using Packages
I don't think software versus data is Greg's point here. The point is that
your software requires certain files to exist within a user's home
directory, which might be unavailable or even non-existent at install time.
If the files are never to be modified after installation, rather than have
them in a home directory, just keep them within the application bundle
itself or somewhere within "/Library/Application Support".
If you are installing initial/default forms of files that may be modified
as the software runs, the normal way to accomplish this is:
1. Install the initial or default form of the data in a known location,
such as within your application bundle or somewhere within
"/Library/Application Support". If we are talking about multiple files, it
would probably be handy to install a single tar or zip archive.
2. When your app or agent launches, it checks the current user's home
directory for the presence of those files, and copies them there if they
do not already exist. This can either be done immediately at startup, or
lazily as the files are actually needed.
Those steps accomplish two things:
1. It provides for users whose home directories would not be found by the
installer.
2. It prevents a subsequent version of your installer from overwriting
files that have already been modified within a home directory without
having to go through any complex version checking.
Steve Stockman
Software Architect/Technical Director
Consumer Products - Macintosh
Symantec Corporation
www.symantec.com <http://www.symantec.com/>
-----Original Message-----
From: James Pritchard <email@hidden>
Date: Wednesday, September 4, 2013 9:28 AM
To: Greg Neagle <email@hidden>
Cc: "email@hidden" <email@hidden>
Subject: Re: Installing to users Home folder using Packages
>It's not software we install to the users home folder but additional
>sample files.
>
>On 04/09/2013 15:21, Greg Neagle wrote:
>> Why do you need to do this?
>>
>> I would not want to use/support your software in an enterprise
>>environment where:
>>
>> 1) There may be multiple user accounts on a machine
>> 2) User accounts might come from a directory service and therefore have
>>no "footprint" on a machine when your software is installed.
>> 3) The user installing your software might be a site administrator, and
>>not the user who will be using your software.
>> 4) The software might be installed by an automated process and there
>>might be no user logged in at all at the time of install.
>> 5) A machine might be set up and configured _before_ the main user's
>>account is created; the main user's account may not even exist at the
>>time of the installation of your software.
>>
>> Software should not _require_ the installation of anything in a user's
>>home directory.
>>
>> -Greg
>>
>> On Sep 4, 2013, at 3:32 AM, James Pritchard <email@hidden>
>>wrote:
>>
>>> Up until now we've been using PackageMaker to put together our
>>>installs but looking to make a change to use Packages for our next
>>>software release.
>>>
>>> An issue we had using PackageMaker was with installing to the users
>>>Home folder. Our solution was to install to the /tmp folder and then
>>>copy the files across in a post flight script. Can anyone tell me if
>>>there a way of installing to the Home folder in Packages, or should I
>>>just carry on using my existing post flight script.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> James
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