Accessing PackageKit programmatically
Hello! I'm looking for a way to invoke the functionality of PackageKit programmatically. The motivation for this is an independent application manager which is used to deploy a number of similar applications on a single machine. The application manager is deployed on both Windows and OSX. On Windows, there is a usable API provided by the Microsoft Installer (MSI) [1] which can be used to install Windows application packages (.msi), query their installation status and uninstall them. On OSX, there is just the UI installer (/System/Library/CoreServices/ Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/Installer) and the command-line installer (/usr/sbin/installer) plus tools like "pkgutil" to query the database. Thus, in order to trigger installation processes from my own application, I would have to use something like NSTask plus some AppleScript code to be able to gain administrator privileges which is a rather crude hack and makes querying things like the installation status rather cumbersome. Does anyone know what the reasoning behind Apple's decision is to not make PackageKit a public Framework? I think it's rather a pity that, although OSX actually comes with a clean mechanism to install and uninstall application packages through functionality provided by the operating system, this functionality is not exposed in a public API so it can be used the same way it can be used on Windows. Thanks, Adrian
[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/Aa369426(v=vs.85).a...
-- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913 _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Installer-dev mailing list (Installer-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.... This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com
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John Paul Adrian Glaubitz