October 2008 - Installer-dev

Re: Turning off relocation (a hack solution to a PackageMaker bug)
by John Gee 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com -- John Gee, ADInstruments Programmers live in interesting times... _______________________________________________ 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.… defaults delete FOO.pkg/Contents/Info IFPkgPathMappings For anyone trying this out, I could not get "default" to access the file using a relative path, but it did work when I specified an absolute path. (Mac OS X 10.5.5) This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour
by Jason Proctor 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com thanks for the response. thanks for all the help, everyone. j _______________________________________________ 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 you can see from my posts this whole relocation thing has me a bit ticked off. i'm not even that clear on why relocation should happen if the application can be installed in the default location, especially if the package flags indicate that the user can't override it. for a Java application, it seems that the relocation policy is to go hunting around the disk for other applications which have the same main class, and overwrite the first (?) one it finds. needless to say this isn't the behaviour that anyone wants or should be the default, IMHO. in my case, a user can have multiple copies of the same application, which look and behave differently due to different runtime configurations, and relocation isn't going to play nice with that, to put it mildly. anyway i turned the relocation thing off in Package Maker (3.0.3 is a *fixed* version....?) and things are behaving themselves now. the loss of time, installed applications, and hair associated with this situation had me wondering whether i should use a 3rd party installer, like i do on windows. that way, system updates etc won't pull the carpet from under me. well, apart from the other ways ;-) On Oct 1, 2008, at 1:17 AM, Jason Proctor wrote: anyone from the Apple package maker or installer teams on this list? state your case. my support for the Mac platform is in question thanks to this situation. There are bugs with PackageMaker concerning relocatability. PackageMaker 3.0.3 was released recently, with changes to try to fix some of those bugs. There are workarounds, kludges, other approaches, etc, that could perhaps get your overall problem ("How can I make an installer for my product?") fixed. This mailing list discusses them frequently, and the discussions are archived. Yes, the archives are not exactly well organized. Stephane Sudre started a FAQ -- maybe some people can help him. Please remember that there are several kinds of Apple people available to developers. There's official, full time, developer tech support (DTS) people, whom you can pay to have your problem addressed, and then there's this mailing list, which has a few Apple employee volunteers, most of whom work on installer products during the day. (I do iLife, iWork, and assorted others.) Of course, most of the people on the mailing list are software developers and "repackagers" -- those who make automated processes to configure Macs. I can't give you an answer as to why you should support the Mac platform. If you want a few clues on how to make installers, those I can share. I'll send an email shortly with a hack to turn of relocation no matter what PackageMaker thinks. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Turning off relocation (a hack solution to a PackageMaker bug)
by John Gee 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

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: Turning off relocation (a hack solution to a PackageMaker bug)
by Bill Coderre 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

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: Turning off relocation (a hack solution to a PackageMaker bug)
by Bill Janssen 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com > > They're "hacks" because they "know" the format of the bundle and flat > > packages. Package Formats are not officially documented. On the other hand, Are they unofficially documented anywhere? I know of http://www.osxgnu.org/info/OSXGNU_Extending_packages.pdf. Bill _______________________________________________ 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: Turning off relocation (a hack solution to a PackageMaker bug)
by Craig Schamp 02 Oct '08

02 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Dkim-signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references; bh=HZW2MMVUy+AugxJpDO7dREsfw1+9o9NgBhRtfzlE3Gk=; b=Mjn5ZVYb80JfZ1WRV2Av/Ht0uB+qCD+fxd5oqTe+FTZQ68H8ErG9iwFehn6SWj8j3q iXaEjLRPlXRbvAbm/Mbk88XqeVSBfJ7de2dOOGahz1tBv1LtfxDCCN5aLYjyGcgqhg+v V5cxNWPHHpNJtE6BhdAPmfFFd36dhUfNEP7dM= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version :content-type:references; b=x4brxDp0mYue55lFzMCQoywTzcwGdCQlNZngA7bA9tD/F6M5b3w3DjfgLDAtMpluG6 EozpzCyUTNlHrmk7kl11lRDR1FCupfV6W5kIYP4MSxGonF9ALuJD1cRapgHrQGoJxeJP fC0V4q0g7CmMkBt1fRoO+cKPL0SZzSdmOqppA= _______________________________________________ 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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Turning off relocation (a hack solution to a PackageMaker bug)
by Bill Coderre 02 Oct '08

02 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com These hacks "slam" the relocatable flag to false. _______________________________________________ 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.… Here is a shell script for "bundle" format installer packages which might help: defaults write FOO.pkg/Contents/Info IFPkgFlagRelocatable -bool NO As for "flat" packages, you could do this: pkgutil --expand FOO.pkg FOO.pkgsrc perl -i -pe 's/relocatable\s*=\s*"true"/relocatable="false"/' FOO.pkgsrc/PackageInfo pkgutil --force --flatten FOO.pkgsrc FOO.pkg They're "hacks" because they "know" the format of the bundle and flat packages. Package Formats are not officially documented. On the other hand, Installer.app in 10.5.5 still installs packages from 10.1 era (late 2001), so it'll probably be a while before the hacks stop working. Anyway, this might be enough to get your problem solved sufficiently that you can get back to writing software. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour
by Bill Coderre 02 Oct '08

02 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Oct 1, 2008, at 1:17 AM, Jason Proctor wrote: anyone from the Apple package maker or installer teams on this list? state your case. my support for the Mac platform is in question thanks to this situation. There are bugs with PackageMaker concerning relocatability. PackageMaker 3.0.3 was released recently, with changes to try to fix some of those bugs. There are workarounds, kludges, other approaches, etc, that could perhaps get your overall problem ("How can I make an installer for my product?") fixed. This mailing list discusses them frequently, and the discussions are archived. Yes, the archives are not exactly well organized. Stephane Sudre started a FAQ -- maybe some people can help him. Please remember that there are several kinds of Apple people available to developers. There's official, full time, developer tech support (DTS) people, whom you can pay to have your problem addressed, and then there's this mailing list, which has a few Apple employee volunteers, most of whom work on installer products during the day. (I do iLife, iWork, and assorted others.) Of course, most of the people on the mailing list are software developers and "repackagers" -- those who make automated processes to configure Macs. I can't give you an answer as to why you should support the Mac platform. If you want a few clues on how to make installers, those I can share. I'll send an email shortly with a hack to turn of relocation no matter what PackageMaker thinks. _______________________________________________ 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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Relocation
by Alfred Labrie 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Dkim-signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding :content-disposition; bh=QEKGakYfGg8IS+OVdYG3DU5eDLsjNVHMoq62Ss3dtNs=; b=xnZKIj/jS7dHDZLmUNlkxauQNk9X5Qb04YqQ/JSnNfue2gPvXa+0jZVo6GBqtIqHbo tFhL4jTlh9fLeJnEhVX3KoIBtNPHEdMSLPaUuGU1Rr3ZnUyhkBFdLW6L7QG3mC3kkN4Y oPTAGGyrNKsAH+tv1Wt1m5TZOEEuRO4CgX+hM= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=fEEgE3/eqZ1qLFPW4C8o90cydIsCoCjsKd3/hD6gyFuA27VWMuacd/A+N570q+FcWK IfoqiV1LPq9m9IUlp4eu3Vq4TFZ/hmsolhdQaVU4Zl3VLuQRWN4uWyk+I0jAFPInvEnL SuILKZgjVcAdMHiFhKN0CuuGywzbbfOnCtPO4= Hello Using PackageMaker 3.0.3, is it possible to disable relocation / pm-token in packages built using command line? This relocate automation issues is really annoying. Regards. _______________________________________________ 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: some alarming PackageMaker / Installer behaviour
by Jason Proctor 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com thanks for the responses, everyone. -- John Gee, ADInstruments Programmers live in interesting times... _______________________________________________ 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.… forgive me for saying this, but even if something called "allow relocation" is on, especially by default, it should not allow overwriting other applications or random directories under one's home directory. particularly if that wasn't the default behaviour under earlier versions of the installer or package maker. that's a bug, and it's probably the biggest bug i've encountered in my time in software. on a related note, i set the destination directory for all my installer targets to /Applications. since the advent of Unix-ish path syntax, ie circa 1970, that's been an absolute path. still, when i selected "absolute path" off the accompanying popup menu, the package maker app decided to select both "absolute path" and "relative path" options on the menu, and change that /Applications destination path to a relative path (ie ../../../../../Applications or somesuch). that's a bug too, and it's almost as big. i'm still wondering why Apple chose to change a working application - the earlier package maker, with its convenient command-line version, which worked just fine thanks - into the current version, which has devastated various application environments on my disk and invalidated all previous installer package files and ant scripts etc, into the bargain. anyone from the Apple package maker or installer teams on this list? state your case. my support for the Mac platform is in question thanks to this situation. At 11:40 AM +1300 10/1/08, John Gee wrote: The default behaviour for applications added to projects is that they are "relocatable". This does not work well on development computers, where there are routinely multiple versions, including the version freshly built. Look in the "Components" tab of the project contents for the "Allow Relocation" checkbox column, and try turning that off. On a closely related note, you may discover after changing the setting that it will not stick. In that case, switching the contents from project relative paths to absolute paths is likely to make the setting stick. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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