Re: .dmg.zip
- From: me18@xxxxxxxxxxx (zoara)
- Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:54:11 +0100
Keith Pritchard <keithop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:55:42 +0100, Ian McCall <ian@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Enlighten me - what is the point of a .dmg.zip file, when a dmg can be
created as a compressed image anyway? Is there a benefit to be gained?
I've noticed an amount of software distributed that way but I would
have thought that just using the a compressed image would be the way to
go.
It's one of those things that Apple have seriously messed up. Amazing
given their attention to detail on packaging of products etc.!!
In windows (sigh) you double click setup.exe, the product get
installed. Albeit, it installs dlls and bits all over your system.
In macosx, you download a dmg.zip. Unzip it to get a zip. double click
it and it's mounted. THEN drag/drop or click an install file depending
which it is. THEN we need to unmount the image, and then delete the
.dmg and decide whether to store the .dmg.zip somewhere.
Considering so much about the OS is spot on, this one bugs me
everytime I install an app :/
To be fair, it's not Apple's fault. They're provided a mechanism whereby
a DMG can be downloaded and it ends up as an application (and nothing
else) with no user intervention. You then drag it where you want. It's
not their fault that people wrap their apps in layers of faff.
There are alternatives ways to solve the problem, of course. It would be
nice if there were a 'first run' mechanism (extended beyond the standard
"I'll create my own prefs files" etc) that could spot if the app were in
a non-standard place and offer to move it to Applications.
I saw some suggestion a while back that an app could check whether it
were being run from within a DMG and offer to 'install' itself
(comprising copy itself to Applications, unmount the DMG and trash it -
so you end up with a clean install and no litter) but that restricts you
to doing the auto-cleanup if and only if the file were in a DMG. What
would be nice is if it could detect whether this was the first time this
version of this app was opened (whether in a DMG or on the desktop or
wherever) and offered to copy itself to /Apps and clean up behind
itself.
The same could apply for installers; once they're done, they offer to
tidy themselves up. If requested, they delete themselves if on disk, or
if on a DMG they unmount the DMG and delete it.
That's all possible - and fairly trivial, really - but Apple should
provide a standard, default mechanism that means that the developers
don't have to put any effort in.
That way, you start your download, then you get a DMG that auto-extracts
itself to the download location; containing either an installer that
installs the app and offers to self destruct, or an app that - when
double-clicked for the first time - offers to tidy itself to where it
'belongs'.
And if you have a browser that supports it, you can do all this from the
browser's download window. Click 'download', the download window
appears, then the download turns into an app or installer in that
window, you double click, follow the above, and are left with nothing
lying around.
Nice.
I've ignored security implications here, by the way. But I think that
it's such a shame that the OSX 'install' process is so damned convoluted
when it needn't be. I see loads of people who have an app in the dock
which actually resides on a DMG on their desktop; click dock icon, it
mounts the DMG, opens the app, and it all seems to work. Until they
clean up their desktop....
It's a mess.
-zoara-
--
defecation occurs
.
- References:
- .dmg.zip
- From: Ian McCall
- Re: .dmg.zip
- From: Keith Pritchard
- .dmg.zip
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