February 2006 - Installer-dev

Automating PackageMaker CLI with Preserve Resource Forks option
by Robert Simutis 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

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Re: documented way to find installation receipt?
by Bill Coderre 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

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RE: documented way to find installation receipt?
by Benjamin Lam 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: AcYva9TsZgsSiHOWQXKjmY07DxrDlABRf/Jw Thread-topic: documented way to find installation receipt? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: documented way to find installation receipt?
by Stéphane Sudre 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com On dimanche, février 12, 2006, at 01:32 AM, Bill Coderre wrote: Now, let me mention how iLife ’06 approached this problem. Solution: Delete the receipts in a postflight script when needed * Prevent installing some 10.2 format package over 10.1 package format Solution: Delete the receipts in a postflight script Solution: Delete the receipt after installation Solution: Upgrade to another major OS version. So, please be crual, just kill the receipts thing. However, ideally, receipts shall be replaced by a database IMHO. My $0.02 _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… [...]The installer's #1 client, however, is the system software installer. If that breaks, almost the entire company sits on hands until it gets fixed. All of these things have conspired to cause extreme frustration inside and outside Apple. Apple employees are not allowed to predict the future. (Well, MOST Apple employees.) Therefore, it's forbidden to say "we plan to fix this in the next release," or even, "we're working on it, and it might get into the next release." Especially on a public mailing list. Maybe only Oracle's employees are allowed to predict the future. But this is so uncertain... Please try to think kindly of the people working on the Installer. They share your pain and frustration. In iLife ’06, most of the apps allow their "rich content" (Themes for iMovie and iDVD, Instruments, Loops. Demo Songs, etc for GarageBand) to be installed in user-specified locations. So how do the iLife apps know where the media got installed? The installer packages have postflight scripts that write simple plist files in known locations that specify the locations. Very simple "one page of code" stuff, immune to the vagaries of the installer. You, as installer authors, can look at that code as "inspiration." It is unsupported, and it is not guaranteed to work in your installer or application. If you use it, and it breaks, you get to fix it. Not Apple. Looking over the code, though, I think you might be better off looking at the plist files, and writing your own code to manage them. I think the code is pretty clear, but it uses some helper utilities that are not guaranteed to be on the user's system, and which might present challenges to ship in your installer packages. I think you are missing one point: iLife 06 is not free to ADC members (paid members included [contrary to what Microsoft would do in such a case with the MSDN program]). So basically, you are suggesting to pay $79 to know how to do one thing. Maybe it could be hosted as a technote since it would avoid people paying $79 or doing piracy to just look at it. Regarding receipts, the more it goes, the more it looks like to be a problem in itself: 1) This solution is incompatible with Universal Binaries if you need to support 10.2 (and contrary to most of the software supported by Apple, some people do need to support 10.2) 2) Versioning supports: with each release of the OS, the way the version is computed is changing. And in most cases, it's causing more issues that anything: * Prevent installing some components of a metapackage because one component is tool old when compared with the receipts. 3) Permissions issues: From what I heard, the latest package for iTunes 6.0.2 is preventing permissions reparation. 4) Security issues: As far as I know, receipts (at least Apple's ones) are being used to know the file permissions, owners and groups to set for a file/folder. As a side effect, whenever you repair your permissions on Mac OS X 10.X (where X is 2 I think), a security flaw is being re-opened on one binary (a setuid flag is set back). This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: documented way to find installation receipt?
by Bill Coderre 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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RE: documented way to find installation receipt?
by Aaron London 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: AcYufQm926fCy3wKSiiDcWc9lUBowAAALxUw Thread-topic: documented way to find installation receipt? The best way to do this, in my experience, is to process the receipt for the given package at install time (e.g. from a postflight script). It is a shame that Apple refuses to accept reality and give us the uninstall functionality we need. BTW, I've already submitted an uninstall feature request (radar 4409862) which Apple has closed as a duplicate. Aaron London _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: documented way to find installation receipt?
by Peter Bierman 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com -pmb _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… My plan is to find the installation receipt, i.e. /Library/Receipts/SMART Board.pkg and use the Info.plist's IFPkgRelocatedPath key to find where the software was installed and then delete the files. To my horror, I was playing around with the Installer and tried installing the software in different locations, and it appears that installation receipts are not always placed in /Library/Receipts. Here is what I tried: It's worse than that. Even if you find the receipt, the IFPkgRelocatedPath key is NOT updated in the receipt to reflect the actual location the software was installed at. To answer your question directly: there is no supported way to find an installation receipt. Installer receipts are not supported API, their location and format are subject to change, have changed in the past, and are likely to change in the future. Sorry. You can safely search the obvious locations for receipts that you are sure you know the structure of, but be prepared to deal with the unexpected. In particular, browsing other people's receipts may be particularly risky, since other software may have been installed using different installer technologies, producing a receipt you are unfamiliar with. If you would like a supported API for exploring previously installed software, please file an enhancement request. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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documented way to find installation receipt?
by Benjamin Lam 09 Feb '06

09 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: AcYt0SXvDIXPPWN5Rvy0LacCqC4y4A== Thread-topic: documented way to find installation receipt? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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PackageMaker command line returns 1 on success
by Chris Griffin 09 Feb '06

09 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thanks. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… When I run PackageMaker from the command line it returns 1 even though everything went fine. I do a -v and there are no errors. This is a problem because when I use this command in Automator it stops. Any suggestions? This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: IFPkgHideSubpackages support?
by Stéphane Sudre 08 Feb '06

08 Feb '06

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com On mercredi, février 8, 2006, at 10:22 PM, Kevin Hoyt wrote: hmm... what does IFPkgHideSubpackages do? It is being used in iLife '06 packages. Yep. [There was somehow an intended pun with the name of the flag]. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.… As far as I can tell, it would be used in the Info.plist of a metapackage to make Installer.app believethat the metapackage is a package. So if you install the metapackage directly, the customized mode is not possible. If the metapackage is a component of a metapackage, then in the Customized mode, the metapackage is seen as a package (its children are not listed). By "hidden" I'm assuming it's not documented??? This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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