April 2011 - Installer-dev - lists.apple.com

Re: Re: Preflight script opens rather than executing
by Tim Streater 23 Apr '11

23 Apr '11

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com On 23 Apr 2011 at 06:08, Karl Kuehn <kuehn.karl(a)gmail.com> wrote: [valid concerns deleted] You're quite right of course; most of these I wouldn't know how to address, and for some as I'm working at home don't have a way of testing. > If your .app can go into the users home directory, then I don't think you > should be using an installer to distribute it. A .dmg is the better way of > going. Not perfect, but better. This is the best piece of advice. A .dmg is easy to set up and avoids a number of issues.. Thanks -- tim _______________________________________________ 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: Preflight script opens rather than executing
by Karl Kuehn 23 Apr '11

23 Apr '11

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:subject:mime-version:content-type:from :in-reply-to:date:cc:content-transfer-encoding:message-id:references :to:x-mailer; bh=bbJ/994cW9DCMQUAQvRR2wezdn8kRF9Q3HNybN6gWxQ=; b=TNXahn153rhJjMThS8d3jOTh0FAnl2LtMTJs3H1Ma+xAUFzDT+0O398Zue6w1JBg2G q4Ca9BNG7XwsqjQQLCCwBsfIwTFvWM6bWs6PzYzMF9jRpYSuvNqDQf21FW5NK9KG5Fq6 5cgz4ArG/f/C1S7OWxIO0mTE/dm5gIbj2jp80= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=subject:mime-version:content-type:from:in-reply-to:date:cc :content-transfer-encoding:message-id:references:to:x-mailer; b=PJFAip+sKH3RqAuzWnutowPZNo9neWOq8/CK39SyoT5EGxKvS+FBbAxmpoqAhBXc1K WWk3FuLgo6g7YE/EH1+qSmZXBH8vEMoUPjqdYuXMVV8TPm8p+8BlsbdZ7LRK4mcn4Z3J +jVSa9358RLbVfpK/hloX+XPwqZd9/dhv9gRk= On Apr 21, 2011, at 2:52 PM, Tim Streater wrote: > I want my app to be installed in the user's Applications folder. Normally this works fine but if that folder is absent then the installer runs anyway and just dumps the files into the user's home directory. So, I'm thinking I should run a pre-install Action for the whole package which will check for the existence of the user's Applications folder and create it if it is absent. I have a PHP script which can do that; it has execute permission and its first line is #!/usr/bin/php. Runs fine from the command line. Sorry about the delayed response, but I want to sound the note of caution here: if you run scripts, then you have to think through every situation that your script could be run in. Just a quick brainstorm comes up with the following situations that you don't seem to be thinking of: 1) What if your installer is used via Apple Remote Desktop when no-one is logged in? 2) What if someone is trying to use your installer and is targeting another volume? 3) Are you absolutely sure that there is only one user who is going to use your application on a given computer? Remember, while most computers have only a single user, those in computer labs can have hundreds of users. And computers in large organizations often have people who install software for end users (and can be logged in with their own accounts when doing so). 4) Are you going to take care of all the myriad of situations that you are going to have to deal with like the ~/Applications folder being chmod'ed so you can't install there? Or there being a file at ~/Applications, or an alias (different than a symlink)? Or the user has their computer set to non-english... or... or... My point here is that the moment you start introducing scripts into the install process you are opening a huge can of worms. Despite being someone who earns his living writing scripts, I am only a fan of them when you can be reasonably certain about the environment you are running on, and installers (other than ones written for in-house use) are things that go out into the wild. If your .app can go into the users home directory, then I don't think you should be using an installer to distribute it. A .dmg is the better way of going. Not perfect, but better. [1] I don't know if ~/Applications uses the .localized system, and if so then from the command-line you might have to set this up. -- Karl Kuehn larkost(a)softhome.net _______________________________________________ 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: Any up-to-date documentation about os x software distribution?
by Don Montalvo 23 Apr '11

23 Apr '11

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:subject:mime-version:content-type:from :in-reply-to:date:cc:content-transfer-encoding:message-id:references :to:x-mailer; bh=P07/Ni6K99scIL50kD834Ke6K76dkHWPhPa/iF+osSk=; b=twzk4ZtS2l/HCO2dywe6ar5X6an7G2P3Nv0aTBPlvLgJlIuU9iwmWNfSzHaGofVQWU v4qmN1oNSzxNBRx7NJyUX+ZCnM0WtwzE1Qh/mE3THaqJzQDYwATT6lWGSOMkeBQ8tf7Z KIPfohAKAItvHHgru0rSRohB/CiLeGwhflnSM= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=subject:mime-version:content-type:from:in-reply-to:date:cc :content-transfer-encoding:message-id:references:to:x-mailer; b=L7/1Y2Z/NXne4igmM9PAV99ZFPxBl9E+Al43/YKDc/Vclt+3SqS6oFgaUxQCMSoXRh SuMfud8fSGSiOiC6J5QxCV/is+5xAGDojsb5RX+e/88xu58XHeO7onzQS91kl8SJmsAP VvMALqM76IohqWg5p2VwZ+vUcjfRIUNByFmX8= Iceberg-Dev <dev.iceberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: > The issue with drag & drop dmg and zip files are that the owner and group are not correct in the end. The trend seems to be for applications to be root:wheel in /Applications. I wish all developers would think like you. :) I'm not a fan of drag-n-drop installs, for this very reason. Whoever did the dragging owns it. It gets worse when the owner of the software is removed from the machine...then it's owned by "_unknown". For enterprise deployment, always worth packaging with proper owner:group settings. Don _______________________________________________ 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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Change background on the EULA dialog in DMG
by Brian Din 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

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 sla_littledisc.jpg

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Preflight script opens rather than executing
by Tim Streater 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com I want my app to be installed in the user's Applications folder. Normally this works fine but if that folder is absent then the installer runs anyway and just dumps the files into the user's home directory. So, I'm thinking I should run a pre-install Action for the whole package which will check for the existence of the user's Applications folder and create it if it is absent. I have a PHP script which can do that; it has execute permission and its first line is #!/usr/bin/php. Runs fine from the command line. If I try to add it as an action though, when the install runs the file is simply opened in BBedit or TextEdit. I want it to be *executed*, not *opened*. How do I make this happen? I did try choosing Get Application as the Preinstall Action and giving that the path to the script. The installer then completes (no longer opens TextEdit) but I'm not sure that my script executes. If I change the name of the folder it's looking for (to Applicationsxxx, say), this folder is not created. Does the Installer pay attention to the exit status of the preinstall script? Does the preinstall script have to have a special name? I also observe that the user is now prompted for a password when this previously (i.e. before I started messing with preinstall scripts) didn't need to. Can I avoid this? Thanks, Tim Streater _______________________________________________ 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: Any up-to-date documentation about os x software distribution?
by Iceberg-Dev 21 Apr '11

21 Apr '11

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:mime-version:in-reply-to:references :content-type:message-id:content-transfer-encoding:from:subject:date :to:x-mailer; bh=mZsHgbl1Vke9rQbCKi4M3xrfs7z5JDa7w5H+kzaLy44=; b=VlIZ/yJwEEX5udT41g441lowRSTuU2XNXyCVyS2AckEEKZKzK7JlwXccZGfib9pm1D s+0hyjBU9aoInysGeYTUJ7flUrezymqoo0zq//gAOmJeolAPhNn3ddLU2ItYFCrnadhW 1cUGV3x15squpDsX2H8h+zZq7n3Ej/1G5ITdM= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:content-type:message-id :content-transfer-encoding:from:subject:date:to:x-mailer; b=IJMlYWttZvMYjxGULeRoxm/YruUQEoECKaTkBIgfaZbhHhHWjG5BWwa1rK+sndRbSp UDYX5z8a1EF1L6DA4Mt8L4KGPN1CnXZgBgW1Q8YL2Ozx9pGl7l6MSEHM8EdWZ6YA9PdV aRo/MOo0TivO7ofEuNxak7Pjv4GfdD7hV2eJs= On Apr 20, 2011, at 1:25 PM, Ulf Dunkel wrote: Not really a concern for 95% of Mac users, fortunately. _______________________________________________ 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.… Technically spoken, I see that more and more software distributors stop distributing .dmg packages in favor of .zip archives. We also prefer .zip archives which are automatically unzipped and checked in the main available browsers. Users are used to drag apps into the Applications folder themselves, but don't always want to overwrite existing versions with the same app name. So .zip archives are a more convenient way. The issue with drag & drop dmg and zip files are that the owner and group are not correct in the end. The trend seems to be for applications to be root:wheel in /Applications. (And, by the way: DMG views looks rather ugly when you have hidden files switched visible. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Any up-to-date documentation about os x software distribution?
by Ulf Dunkel 20 Apr '11

20 Apr '11

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Organization: invers Software & DSD.net User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.9 Hi Peter. Feel free to distribute your software in any channels you like to. http://www.dsd.net/company/services.php?lan=en ---Ulf Dunkel - - - - - What guidelines should one follow to distribute an application for OS X? I guess that the app store is the recommended way, but what if you do not distribute it via app store? As asked previously: http://lists.apple.com/archives/installer-dev/2010/Dec/msg00001.html This documentation is considered legacy: http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/#documentation/DeveloperTools… So is there any official (non-legacy) guidelines how do distribute non-appstore-applications on OS X? Or any chance some new documentation will appear in the near future? _______________________________________________ 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 Mac App Store is a very good platform for Mac OS X software distribution, but it is not the only platform. Nor does it all the marketing and advertisement that you can do yourself on other channels. Technically spoken, I see that more and more software distributors stop distributing .dmg packages in favor of .zip archives. We also prefer .zip archives which are automatically unzipped and checked in the main available browsers. Users are used to drag apps into the Applications folder themselves, but don't always want to overwrite existing versions with the same app name. So .zip archives are a more convenient way. (And, by the way: DMG views looks rather ugly when you have hidden files switched visible.) If you want to distribute localized versions of your app(s), I recommend to cooperate with localizers who also distribute your apps to their markets, doing manual translation and support in their native language. - Like we do. ;-) On 19.04.2011 11:26, Peter Fornwall wrote: / Peter This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Any up-to-date documentation about os x software distribution?
by Peter Fornwall 19 Apr '11

19 Apr '11

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev(a)lists.apple.com Thread-index: Acv+c9sGaMhkQAf+RheykLtZveAU4Q== _______________________________________________ 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: preventing relocation
by Nat Echols 07 Apr '11

07 Apr '11

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:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; bh=UiGU3VAW014iNL89cniNecHUx9AEr+F27qHXVhsGs0Y=; b=mXmYZLvUPcOenuogC+3TK9mz2EgulVvUM6BLs/0X/EGxxRNsG2KTRWs5KIfC/u83YX XHL7e1PoVf50gNBVelh4hi8S6WsIGgQwA0ZizKPHErXmxU54CSkx18LWZOKKTZBhNW+P tUT38KR1fag0/XM1r1V1uxfMLPbXWyV3H5i+w= Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type; b=Lb7rYIk8fMotZHM7eomurIX+Ky9BAEC6M2Ds3VVbMbEZM6oCXGyyt2UeDdx+hXI2DI JZRVKaVqOXvdYt+LEsDAyhRObVMN5yQFzXjFPTPwE+WIx4P1IYIS5Hph/Hxx6XULiWeZ cvQQ/vi4Kz9vPXPHgWvPJcfn5LrE1AjQWhNHo= _______________________________________________ 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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kext "improper installation" only when pkg built from CLI not GUI
by Mac QA 06 Apr '11

06 Apr '11

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