Re: Why doesn't Apple's Installer let me choose architecture?
Re: Why doesn't Apple's Installer let me choose architecture?
- Subject: Re: Why doesn't Apple's Installer let me choose architecture?
- From: Greg Guerin <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:12:51 -0700
Robert Nicholson wrote:
>If there was a place to decide what architectures you want to install
>then Installer.app would be it. So why given the increasing
>popularity of laptops with small drives doesn't apple incorporate the
>ability to choose installation architectures for any package in their
>Installer app?
>
>Ideally I wouldn't have to download a universal binary but it's
>unlikely you can get the distributor to put up thin binaries all the
>time.
>...
>
>Also,
>
>Is there any tool besides using lipo by hand that can prune universal
>binaries.
When my clients have asked for this in the past, I simply create an
installation script that runs 'ditto -arch' with a value from the 'arch'
command. See 'man arch' and 'man ditto'.
Most clients who've asked for this in the past are now coming to regret it.
The space saved is almost never significant. A small number of apps with
really big executables do benefit, but these are rare enough to consider
case by case rather than generally.
The worst problem is that users are almost never aware that they are
installing an arch-specific executable. They assume it will run on any Mac
anywhere, and there are a somewhat surprising number of installs to
external drives (including flash drives). When the program doesn't run,
the software company gets a complaint, which has real costs to handle.
Given the small percentage of space saved vs. the cost of handling
problems, the ROI that companies thought would be there just isn't.
If you really want to save disk space in general, work on compressing the
app's resources instead of arch-stripping its executables. The payoff is
usually higher, though the problem is not nearly so easy to solve.
This is very much app-specific, so YMMV a lot. If you have a really huge
executable, it's a different picture. As a general strategy, though, it's
not worthwhile, in my experience. In particular, there are after-market
utilities that a user can apply to remove arch's from apps, so doing it in
the app's installer isn't cost-effective, from the mfgr's POV. To remove
languages from an existing app, use the Finder's Get Info window, under the
Languages pane (use at your own risk).
-- GG
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