July 2008 - Installer-dev - lists.apple.com

Re: Changing the custom install location
by Stéphane Sudre 03 Jul '08

03 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com You can know that 2 ways: No. Write a wrapper. _______________________________________________ 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.… On Jul 3, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Nethan Aryan wrote: Thanks for your response, Actually I am deploying a product which other than having the application bundle, has lot of other resources like Plugins bundles, libs, documents and what not. And all these other resources are not part of application bundle but need to be placed in the product's parent application folder along with the application bundle. I have created an installer for this product and have provided to our customers. Our customers generally have multiple drag copies of the install on their system. I didn't set the reallocation flag for any of the sub components including application, simply because 1. It allows reallocation flag to be set only for bundles, but not for other resources and folders 2. as in case there are more than one copies of reallocatable files on the drive, the installer.app patches the first file found on the drive, without user know which installation copy has actually got patched? Now I am planning for an update of my application with some customer reported defects. I don't want to spend time creating an updater for my application, rather want to use the same installer, So that for my new customers I can give them this installer having some critical defects already fixed, and for my existing customers, the same installer can be used to patch their existing installation. So for this installer 1. I want to know if this is a fresh install or I need to patch my previous installation. (Probably this can be achieved my reading receipts) - a preupgrade or postupgrade script would be run if they are provided in your package (in the case of a non FLAT package) - you could do that with code using the LaunchServices API to locate your application (or mdfind(1)). 2. In case I have to patch my previous install, then I want a way to know if more than one copy of my product is already present on his system, and to provide my customer option to choose the copy he wants me to patch. (This I was planning to achieve by writing an installer Plugin) 2a. Then I wanted to set this user selected path to the custom location. Which is not possible???? Can you suggest any other alternative approach to achieve the above scenario? This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Changing the custom install location
by Nethan Aryan 03 Jul '08

03 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Subject:To:Cc:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Message-ID; b=kD81u5OVSTfY0VdTNkRnzYLXDaidIix3hCqTyDRYoxOa+ROd1l4Qu2xl06bYy1TsvzwHl0HjcsmlJpZG5JagL4//WQdYBri6n9VWM3aI6wGgiAHiH+YFsiZ7P/pwvswQyxmYaCNo9PgFPFCpuHiA9PqLoR6e6ZeAMUY53S73YNc=; _______________________________________________ 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: silent sub-launch of dependent package during install?
by Paul Miller 02 Jul '08

02 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421) -- Paul Miller | paul(a)fxtech.com | www.fxtech.com | Got Tivo? _______________________________________________ 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.… Bryan S. Lee wrote: Running an installer from within a postscript should work fine. I’m currently doing it with MS Office (among other products) without repacking MS’s package. Have the main installer putting the secondary installer in a /tmp location and then engage the second installer using the following command in the postscript. installer -pkg /private/tmp/office/office2008/Office\ Installer.mpkg -target LocalSystem Yep, I have confirmed that this works on Tiger + Leopard. The second installer is very fast (just installs a StartupItem), so all seems well. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: how a single product will install to different locations
by Stéphane Sudre 02 Jul '08

02 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-ins/ I agree that these needs are not well served by Installer.app. - look for the locations of possibly multiple Photoshop installation - request admin authentication - for each selected destination: _______________________________________________ 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.… On Jul 1, 2008, at 11:50 PM, Bill Coderre wrote: On Jul 1, 2008, at 2:18 PM, Paul Miller wrote: I'm a plugin developer too, and unfortunately, the sad reality is that plugin installation for Adobe Photoshop (and other hosts) is our #1 customer support issue. Customers generally have several versions of Photoshop or After Effects or whatever installed, and the plugin locations of these products is usually something like A "simple" Mac installer just doesn't know enough to help the user install their plugin into that path, since we can't easily find out which Adobe products (or versions) they may have installed. The solution I gave, I think it's a commonly-used approach. I added a few security tweaks. It can work just fine in 10.3, probably 10.1. Unfortunately, without a completely insane amount of work or writing custom installer plugins or even a custom installer (as Adobe did), we're literally *forced* to ask the user something they may not necessarily know, or forget to change with the "Choose Location" button. This is probably why I see this question asked almost once a week. I asked it myself a few months back. On Windows, this is a relatively trivial thing with most installer tools. Or, we can easily search out the latest version of Photoshop (that we know about) and default the install location to that. I still can't even do something as simple as that with installer scripts (at least in pre-Leopard, but you know, we still have to support Tiger users too!). It's clear that Installer.app's "find" functionality is insufficient for this. Installer.app is also not capable of installing one "thing" in several places. Maybe a solution is to rely on Installer.app for what it can do and use another solution to do what it can't. In the case described, if we omit installations from Terminal or ARD, a solution could be to write a helper app that would: - present the list to the user (checkboxes to select where to install it) 1. Modify the default location to the appropriate one within the package (good luck with a FLAT package) 2. install the package through the installer command line tool. (Yeah, progression would not be displayed but it does prevent you to display an indeterminate progress bar in the helper app). This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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installer that will support multiple installation path , multiple product installation
by Sandeep Dhama 02 Jul '08

02 Jul '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: silent sub-launch of dependent package during install?
by Bryan S. Lee 02 Jul '08

02 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: Acjbs8Bu3pBQePKPTdKGBQrajHezbgANqkjy Thread-topic: silent sub-launch of dependent package during install? User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.11.0.080522 _______________________________________________ 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: how a single product will install to different locations
by Bill Coderre 01 Jul '08

01 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-ins/ I agree that these needs are not well served by Installer.app. _______________________________________________ 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.… On Jul 1, 2008, at 2:18 PM, Paul Miller wrote: I'm a plugin developer too, and unfortunately, the sad reality is that plugin installation for Adobe Photoshop (and other hosts) is our #1 customer support issue. Customers generally have several versions of Photoshop or After Effects or whatever installed, and the plugin locations of these products is usually something like A "simple" Mac installer just doesn't know enough to help the user install their plugin into that path, since we can't easily find out which Adobe products (or versions) they may have installed. The solution I gave, I think it's a commonly-used approach. I added a few security tweaks. It can work just fine in 10.3, probably 10.1. Unfortunately, without a completely insane amount of work or writing custom installer plugins or even a custom installer (as Adobe did), we're literally *forced* to ask the user something they may not necessarily know, or forget to change with the "Choose Location" button. This is probably why I see this question asked almost once a week. I asked it myself a few months back. On Windows, this is a relatively trivial thing with most installer tools. Or, we can easily search out the latest version of Photoshop (that we know about) and default the install location to that. I still can't even do something as simple as that with installer scripts (at least in pre-Leopard, but you know, we still have to support Tiger users too!). It's clear that Installer.app's "find" functionality is insufficient for this. Installer.app is also not capable of installing one "thing" in several places. While we're on the subject, why don't you guys release Installer upgrades to previous OS versions, so we can continue to use your latest installer stuff and still support all supported platforms? Every time there is a new OS X release, there's some new installer change, and oh, none of them are backward compatible. Makes me want to just write my own installer, and I'm probably not the only one. :-( There's a lot of reasons, but I think Apple should supply an Official Answer to this, and I'm not the one to do that. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Leopard PackageMaker and postinstall script
by Stéphane Sudre 01 Jul '08

01 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Jun 30, 2008, at 8:17 PM, bobkells wrote: Having trouble getting a script named postinstall to run from an installation created by Leopard PackageMaker, using backwards compatible options with a Tiger *.pmproj file. The Leopard Installer does not want to run postinstall. The only way it will run the script is to rename it to postflight, and create via the Tiger PackageMaker. The Leopard Installer then runs the postflight script. Does Leopard Installer have trouble running a postinstall script? Thanks...bob It might be necessary to detail why this behavior happens: -- Stephane _______________________________________________ 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.… On Jul 1, 2008, at 6:52 PM, Scott Amory wrote: Ok, so it sounds like you are making a Tiger style (bundled) installer. First can you confirm that the postinstall script that you have created is inside the packages Resources folder after you build the package with PackageMaker? If the script is there and you do not see the script run during install make sure that the system you are installing to hasn't already had the package installed on it (check for a receipt). A piece of knowledge that people seem to miss with these styles of installers is when scripts get run. A postflight script will always run. A postinstall script will only run the first time a package is installed. A postupgrade script will only run when the package is being installed for a second (or later) time. Chances are if you delete your receipt you'll see your postinstall script run. - with Tiger compatible packages: a postinstall script was run only if the package was installed for the first time. - with Leopard-only compatible packages: the postinstall script is run whenever you install a package. The postinstall script is now the postflight script. N.B: If this mail does not make it to the mailing-list, I will start believing the mailing-lists at Apple are discriminating the Orange mail servers. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: how a single product will install to different locations
by Paul Miller 01 Jul '08

01 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421) ... Or worse. /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-ins/ -- Paul Miller | paul(a)fxtech.com | www.fxtech.com | Got Tivo? _______________________________________________ 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.… Bill Coderre wrote: On Jul 1, 2008, at 11:06 AM, Sandeep Dhama wrote: I need to create a installer in which a single product will support many choices for where it should be installed. For example i have a adobe after effects that will install multiple destination locations. I have created a installer plugin that will ask different destination locations from user at the time of installation. But i do not know how to install the product to these different destination location. So please tell me how to do this?. Here is one way to do it, BUT it's ugly, and could have security issues, and I hope there's a better way to do it: That's one reason why this is a bad idea. The other is that you're ignoring the usual Mac user experience conventions for installation. Mac users don't expect installation to be a huge ordeal involving many many choices. I'm a plugin developer too, and unfortunately, the sad reality is that plugin installation for Adobe Photoshop (and other hosts) is our #1 customer support issue. Customers generally have several versions of Photoshop or After Effects or whatever installed, and the plugin locations of these products is usually something like A "simple" Mac installer just doesn't know enough to help the user install their plugin into that path, since we can't easily find out which Adobe products (or versions) they may have installed. (Not only Mac -- my pal Robert Reimann and his mentor Alan Cooper formulated a bunch of design principles, such as "Considerate products don't burden you with their problems" and "Considerate products don't ask a lot of questions" and "Considerate products use common sense." There's also the meta-principle, "Decide who your target audience is (hopefully 90% of your users), and design for them." Unfortunately, without a completely insane amount of work or writing custom installer plugins or even a custom installer (as Adobe did), we're literally *forced* to ask the user something they may not necessarily know, or forget to change with the "Choose Location" button. This is probably why I see this question asked almost once a week. I asked it myself a few months back. In your case: Why should you burden all of your users with customization questions if most of them just want the defaults? So, perhaps a better question is, "what exactly do you want your installer to accomplish, overall?" You've posted a whole bunch of questions recently, all of them are obviously trying to accomplish one bigger goal, what is that? I think his question was the same as mine. How do we do the work for the user and find these plugin install locations and present a menu (after-all, the user could have 4 or more copies of Photoshop installed) rather than assume the user even knows where to install the stuff? On Windows, this is a relatively trivial thing with most installer tools. Or, we can easily search out the latest version of Photoshop (that we know about) and default the install location to that. I still can't even do something as simple as that with installer scripts (at least in pre-Leopard, but you know, we still have to support Tiger users too!). While we're on the subject, why don't you guys release Installer upgrades to previous OS versions, so we can continue to use your latest installer stuff and still support all supported platforms? Every time there is a new OS X release, there's some new installer change, and oh, none of them are backward compatible. Makes me want to just write my own installer, and I'm probably not the only one. :-( This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: how a single product will install to different locations
by Bill Coderre 01 Jul '08

01 Jul '08

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Or worse. On Jul 1, 2008, at 11:06 AM, Sandeep Dhama wrote: I need to create a installer in which a single product will support many choices for where it should be installed. For example i have a adobe after effects that will install multiple destination locations. I have created a installer plugin that will ask different destination locations from user at the time of installation. But i do not know how to install the product to these different destination location. So please tell me how to do this?. Here is one way to do it, BUT it's ugly, and could have security issues, and I hope there's a better way to do it: 0) Require ROOT authorization to install. 1) In the InstallerPlugin, get a location, and write it to file /tmp/ com.Company.Product.pkg.LOCATIONTOINSTALL 2) In the installer preflight, delete directory /tmp/ com.Company.Product.pkg.HOLDINGTANK and create it securely with "700" permissions and owned by ROOT. 3) Have the installer write its payload into /tmp/ com.Company.Product.pkg.HOLDINGTANK 4) During postflight, read /tmp/ com.Company.Product.pkg.LOCATIONTOINSTALL and CHECK TO MAKE SURE IT'S SANE!!! 5) Assuming so, "mv" or "ditto" /tmp/ com.Company.Product.pkg.HOLDINGTANK to the desired location. (If you are updating an existing installation, however, this might not be 100% correct. You might have to ditto and then rm a bunch of leftover crud. Installer.app has a lot more finesse.) NOTE that even though the above lists some security precautions, it still might be insecure (I am not a security expert, and I cannot guarantee my work to you). Why is that important? Well, if a user on the machine knows this install is coming along tomorrow, and can read the scripts and is malicious, they could replace the contents of tmp/ com.Company.Product.pkg.LOCATIONTOINSTALL with, for instance, "/ kernel" and make the machine unbootable. That's one reason why this is a bad idea. The other is that you're ignoring the usual Mac user experience conventions for installation. Mac users don't expect installation to be a huge ordeal involving many many choices. (Not only Mac -- my pal Robert Reimann and his mentor Alan Cooper formulated a bunch of design principles, such as "Considerate products don't burden you with their problems" and "Considerate products don't ask a lot of questions" and "Considerate products use common sense." There's also the meta-principle, "Decide who your target audience is (hopefully 90% of your users), and design for them." These principles come from a book called "About Face," which is now in its third complete rewrite, which is unprecedented for a computer book. Then again, as far as I am concerned, "Strunk and White" is the "About Face" of how to write to-the-point-yet-expressive English. Alan Cooper "designed" Visual Basic, one of Microsoft's most rabidly-loved products ever. In his first version of "About Face" though, he called Microsoft installers "Klingon Interrogation Mode" because you'd start an install and then BOOM question after question would appear, like "What's your IP address?" You have a good idea that if you answer the question incorrectly, your machine will be broken. You COULD go look up the answer, except that you are stuck in INSTALL MODE and can't go look things up. And finally, the installer program is just plain dumb, because it could look up the IP address itself and not even ask you. After a decade of writing installers, I have come to the conclusion that the best installer is the one that works as quickly and quietly as possible. No one WANTS to install software. They want to USE software. Your installer is an OBSTACLE. Make it as small and pleasant as possible.) In your case: Why should you burden all of your users with customization questions if most of them just want the defaults? So, perhaps a better question is, "what exactly do you want your installer to accomplish, overall?" You've posted a whole bunch of questions recently, all of them are obviously trying to accomplish one bigger goal, what is that? What, in total, are you trying to install, and why must so many things be customizable? _______________________________________________ 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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