Re: Installer with XCode?

In article <1175088830.761666.163860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"p8mode" <p8mode@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks very much for all the helpful replies and comments.

Seems like Mac users like to take more responsibility than their Ms
Windows counterparts ;-)

There are still a couple of situations where Im not sure it wouldnt be
a good idea to use a "proper" installer though (rather tha let the
user "copy" the app files to the Application directory), or if there
are different conventions in the Mac world.
For example:

Shared Libraries:
If I have several related apps which share some common libraries (dlls
on windows, and I only want one copy of each on he user's machine) My
(un)installers would be able to check that the common files are never
overwritten with older versions or removed if another of my apps which
uses them is still installed.

<pedantic>You should not care to what you want, but to what your users
want</pedantic>. If the price of having only one copy of a shared
library on the disk is the risk that common files are overwritten with
older versions or removed, I would rather have you put multiple copies
on my disk (unless, of course, your shared code is truly enormous in
size)

I am not saying that you do not need an installer, but if you want to
develop an application that behaves as a good Mac citizen, you should
know the trade-offs of your choices well. See

<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFrameworks/
Tasks/InstallingFrameworks.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20002261-97286-BBCIHF
EF>


Small updates:
Id like to be able to produce updates for my apps. To keep the
download size to a minimum Id like to be able to only include only
those files necessary (changed) . The update installer however could
check that the other necessary files are all there, and give the user
an appropriate message if not (eg if he tries to install an update
without already having installed the app itself)

IMO, you should either ship a new version or have your application
manage its own upgrades. If an application updates itself, it will not
have problems finding out where it is installed. If you ship an upgrade
application, it must either search for the application, and that will be
lengthy, or it will have to let the user point to the application, which
is boring for the user.

Local Settings:
Sometimes Id like to be able to write setting to a directory outside
the app directory (eg when running my app from a network computer Id
like to be able to save user preferences locally). An uninstaller
would give my app a chance to clean up here (delete the settings
files).

If you want your program to be popular, you _never_ want to write
settings to the app directory.

1) users do not like it; settings belong in ~/Library/Preferences; see
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConf
ig/Articles/UserPreferences.html>
2) users may not be able to write there
3) different users may have different preferences

Also, you should not require an unistaller for deleting preferences.

1) most of the time, keeping them around in case the user changes his
mind is the right thing to do
2) if you put your preferences where they belong, users that care about
it will know where to find and how to delete your preferences
(you probably will find different opinions on this, but IMO anybody who
cares about having a few kB of stale preferences files should also care
about keeping an uninstaller around just in case (s)he wanted to
uninstall things later)

Do these seem like valid reasons for shipping an app with an installer
on MacOsX, and if so would the installer that ships with XCode be
suitable/good for this?

Some of them may be valid, depending on the details of the application,
but I think you should do some more reading before you can make that
choice.

Reinder
.

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