On Feb 25, 2009, at 7:24 PM, Peter Hosey wrote:
On Feb 25, 2009, at 19:20:01, Chris Forsythe wrote:You'll notice that when you download the DMG, it automatically decompresses and launches Installer.app,Is this something that's regarded as "the apple way" and/or something that we won't get complaints about?Internet-enabled disk images are uncommon, but they are what Apple recommends, and I'm sure they'll confuse fewer users than regular disk images.
It's true that Apple endorses this method for simple installs. For normal applications, I've seen people drag the app from the disk image window straight to the dock, such that when they start the app later, it mounts the disk image first... (sigh) The extent to which the download and install process can be made seamless and invisible to users can help prevent that type of situation.
As Peter said, this type of DMG is uncommon in practice. I think that's because many devs of drag-n-drop applications just package the app in a ZIP file, which Safari processes in the same way as an internet-enabled DMG—it leaves the contents in the Downloads folder and places the container in the Trash. I tend to think that DMG files are slightly more flexible for longer-term reuse, such as for remote installs, and especially when used outside Safari, but I'll admit it's somewhat subjective.
Can our scripts to build the disk image be modified to do that? Check out the Release directory.Not only should that be trivial, but I also foresee much code death if we go that way. No need to worry about aliases, Finder icon positions, background images, etc. etc. etc. It's just a folder with an Installer package and a (hopefully much better by then) uninstaller script.
Agreed, it should be really easy. I implemented this for one of my recent school-related side projects, and would be happy to share the setup.
http://cocoaheads.byu.edu/code/CHDataStructures
svn checkout http://dysart.cs.byu.edu/chsvn/CHDataStructures/
The Deployment target has a script phase which builds the disk image,
and will even handle spaces in the names if so desired. It would be
easy to adapt to using a version number (like 1.1.4) instead of the
date of SVN rev.
One thing to note is that when an internet-enabled DMG contains only the installer, it is automatically launched. However, if there are 2 or more items, a directory with the same name and contents as the DMG is created in the Downloads folder, but the installer doesn't launch. That means that an uninstaller script like the current one would actually detract from a seamless install. It's worth considering integrating the uninstall as part of the pref pane, perhaps as an Uninstall button that forks an uninstall script or something similar. Since I'm not familiar with the source, what do the devs think?
- Quinn
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