On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 4:27 PM Scott Palmer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Really? Wow. Okay, another option (still preferable to a .pkg IMO) is > to simply distribute the application bundle in zipped form. That has the > advantage that you also don’t need a Mac to create it. In most cases > Safari would automatically extract it and leave the application sitting in > your Downloads folder. That's not a great user experience for Mac OSX users - it kind of telegraphs "we don't actually care about Mac OSX users". Back in 2004-5, I wrote the first Ant-based stuff to generate a PKG for NetBeans - it wasn't too hard. At the time I dug a little bit into making that build truly cross platform. Think I wrote a blog about it on java.net at the time. You needed to have pax to build the archive - it's actually part of the posix standard and generates tar-compatible archives (after much digging I figured out that tar would not generate a valid PKG and the only difference in the archives was the inclusion of an entry for./ - strange but true). The missing link was apple's hdiutil utility for creating disk images - I remember digging around in OpenDarwin a bit but I don't remember if I didn't find it or just wasn't ambitious enough to build it for Linux. At any rate, that problem may have been solved by now. So it would be worth looking into. I don't think PKG files are particularly fancy or difficult to build - the plist format is well documented, and after that its just laying out the files and bundling them up - fussy, but once it works it works. So I think with a little work we might be able to do portable PKG builds. It sounds like someone has been working a bit on PKG generation? If so I could take a look and see what I remember from days of yore. -Tim > > Regards, > > Scott > > > On Aug 12, 2018, at 12:19 AM, Tim Boudreau <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > This debate was had once about 14 years ago - and the decision to go with > > .pkg installers on Mac OSX was made for this reason: There were a lot of > > "NetBeans is unusably slow" reports on OSX. > > > > The reason? A LOT of users never unpacked the .app - they were running it > > directly from the mounted, compressed .dmg image. It turns out that's not > > that unusual. > > > > Random access Java classloading does not play nicely AT ALL with the > > compression used for .dmg images. > > > > I strongly recommend not repeating that mistake. > > > > -Tim > > > > Only Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 1:44 AM Scott Palmer <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> The macOS “installer” should be nothing more than a disk image with the > >> application bundle. It should not be a .pkg file that might require > admin > >> privileges as it would be a drag and drop install. The user should be > able > >> to drag the app bundle wherever they want. > >> > >> Scott > >> > >>> On Aug 10, 2018, at 6:54 PM, Carl Mosca <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> > >>> I work in a place where you need admin rights to install on Windows as > >> well > >>> but that's a policy. > >>> > >>> As far as the MacOS goes, it's based on BSD. > >>> > >>> Therefore if /Applications is owned by root:wheel (or something similar > >>> that's not the current user), you need privileges to "su or sudo" in > >> order > >>> to complete the installation process. That is to say, the filesystem > is > >>> requiring the elevated access which in my opinion is a good thing. > >>> > >>> One could/should be able to install in his/her home directory and not > >> need > >>> such access and I have seen apps take that approach as well. > >>> > >>> Carl > >>> > >>>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:57 PM Will Hartung <[email protected]> > >> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 1:10 PM, Kenneth Fogel < > >> [email protected] > >>>>> > >>>> wrote: > >>>> > >>>>> Yes, an installer is nice but all it should do on the Windows > platform > >> is > >>>>> unzip NetBeans in the folder of choice and add a shortcut. > >>>>> > >>>> > >>>> For some reason that I don't understand, and perhaps someone could > >> explain, > >>>> the installer for MacOS requires Administration privileges. > >>>> > >>>> Being that it, too, is essentially a "zip file" (it's an application > >>>> bundle), I never really understood why it needs admin privs to > install. > >>>> > >>>> Maybe it's some Mac specific thing. > >>>> > >>> > >>> > >>> -- > >>> Carl J. Mosca > >> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > >> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > >> > >> For further information about the NetBeans mailing lists, visit: > >> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Mailing+lists > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > > http://timboudreau.com > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > For further information about the NetBeans mailing lists, visit: > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Mailing+lists > > > > -- http://timboudreau.com
