site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: installer-dev@lists.apple.com thanks for the quick response! I guess I'm hoping for too much, but hoping nonetheless... thanks, cw On Jul 20, 2007, at 12:27 PM, Fritz Anderson wrote: On 20 Jul 2007, at 11:16 AM, Chad Wagner wrote: — F _______________________________________________ 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: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/installer-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a... yes, I agree about the "evil" bit. I'm trying to avoid things like that, and a user savvy enough to remove all other files will probably find that one too anyway. it's just hard to be such a "good" developer when there are a number of "evil" users out there (though hopefully a minority)... I'm trying to think, what would I as a user think to do to "completely" uninstall a program, and I would certainly delete any preferences, receipts, etc. I was hoping maybe there is something that the OS maintains that the user can't undo (short of a clean re- install of the OS) such that I could determine that "com.mycompany.mypackage" had already been encountered. kind of like a file ID reference that can't be changed and will never be reused, but as far as I know there's no way of getting a file ID reference for a file that used to exist but has since been deleted. is there way that I can check during my installation whether my software has been installed before, even if it has since been completely uninstalled? any advice appreciated, thanks! If you mean _completely_ uninstalled — meaning that all trace of the software having been there is undetectable, then obviously you can't detect it. Most users are not so thorough. You might look for the preference file, or for the receipt (/Library/Receipts) from a previous installation. Your software might place an invisible "breadcrumb" file of zero length somewhere in the system for later installations to discover, but putting unauthorized files on other people's computers is evil. This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com