[Palegolas]

Has Apple made public guidlines of how a simple Mac installation procedure should work for Mac OS X? Well, I don't know, but I'm sure they have. So, why aren't developers taking it in? Everywhere I read about new OS X applications, they go something like "... but the installation procedure is somewhat tricky, but for an experienced unix user it shouldn't be too bad..."
Why not spend that extra time to make all the files go where they should and change all settings that has to be changed automatically. How difficult can it be? I really hope this is just temporary problems at the early young life of OSX.

[Developer]

Actually I installed most of my apps by dragging them from a disk image to the application folder. That's the way it should be.
The only ones that came with an installer were either little utility apps (AIM, Acrobat Reader... - I really didn't like that) and the development tools (it was acceptable with them).
I never installed something that required any Unix trickery. Nor should anybody else.


Developer

[me]

The only program I wish had an installer is Sharity, its not hard to install but it should have an installer. Unfortunately no one wants to use the Apple installer because of the pax related problems.

[JHromadka]

Originally posted by Developer:
<STRONG>Actually I installed most of my apps by dragging them from a disk image to the application folder. That's the way it should be.</STRONG>

I agree. I want images that I just drag applications to wherever I want. The closest I've come to a unix install was when I used the devtools to create a standalone Java app for Citrix.

Originally posted by Developer:
<STRONG>Actually I installed most of my apps by dragging them from a disk image to the application folder. That's the way it should be.
</STRONG>

Not every application can (or should) be contained in one folder you drag into your applications folder. For simple programs, this is all right, though it'd be nice if the launching of the disk mounting utility were somewhat less than glacial.

Two slightly tangential issues:

First the placing of all programs into either the applications folder or the utilities folder (and some programs relying on there residence there) is bad. There's no reason for a hard coded pathname and such a strict directory structure. It's a multi-user operating system but probably 90% of the computers are single-user systems.

Second, an update taking 10 seconds to write to disk and 5 minutes updating the prebinding is getting a little old. I know it's the price we pay for Cocoa, but it'd be nice to see this go away someday, or at least minimized.

[Mactoid]

Originally posted by &lt;jethro&gt;:
<STRONG>the placing of all programs into either the applications folder or the utilities folder (and some programs relying on there residence there) is bad. There's no reason for a hard coded pathname and such a strict directory structure. It's a multi-user operating system but probably 90% of the computers are single-user systems.</STRONG>

There is no reason why all your Applications have to go in /Applications. Apple provides that folder as a nice universally accessable place to keep them, but nothing stops you from doing otherwise. If an app breaks if it is moved then that is just bad design, not apple's fault.

We had a root Applications folder in OS 9 also. I don't see the difference.

[Developer]

As long as we are talking about applications and not drivers and such, I don't see why a non-trivial application can not be correctly bundled and allow drag-and-drop installation.
You only need an installer if you have to spread different files all over different places over your hard disk. And I really don't want this (any more).


Developer

[Palegolas]

Drag and drop is excellent. How can it get more userfriendly? So what about uninstalling? Drag the folder to the trashcan and the application and all it's components are "uninstalled"? Windows has got a standard interface for un-installing applications for sometime. I'd be glad if we didn't need it, but sometimes I've actually missed it on the Mac OS. Especially when you've had your mac for... say 3-4 years. I've had a LOT of applications during the time, and I've trashed the application's folder when I don't want it anymore. But some apps just put stuff in the system folder and stuff, difficult to keep track of. As I understand it on OS X, the actual system will be untouched. Drivers and inits and stuff will be helper apps running outside the OS. Is this the case? And how does uninstalling work?

[moki]

Originally posted by Mactoid:
<STRONG>There is no reason why all your Applications have to go in /Applications. Apple provides that folder as a nice universally accessable place to keep them, but nothing stops you from doing otherwise. If an app breaks if it is moved then that is just bad design, not apple's fault.</STRONG>

yes and no. I have an application I'm developing which by default should run automatically when they log in. I can add myself to the Login items list, but it it wants a full path name.

Guess what happens if the user decides to move their app somewhere else? Login items won't find it, and it'll fail to load. I suppose I could punt on the issue and just tell people to add it to thei login items manually, but this seems... silly.

[Palegolas]

Originally posted by moki:
<STRONG>

yes and no. I have an application I'm developing which by default should run automatically when they log in. I can add myself to the Login items list, but it it wants a full path name.

Guess what happens if the user decides to move their app somewhere else? .....</STRONG>

But doesn't X know what apps are on the drive where and can automatically find them when called on as on any modern OS? I mean, just as if you'd open up, say, a photoshop document and Photoshop'd launch nomatter where the user moved around the folders. Couldn't you do something similar?

[moki]

Originally posted by Palegolas:
<STRONG>

But doesn't X know what apps are on the drive where and can automatically find them when called on as on any modern OS? I mean, just as if you'd open up, say, a photoshop document and Photoshop'd launch nomatter where the user moved around the folders. Couldn't you do something similar?</STRONG>

Well, the real problem is that the Login items is the only way I'm aware of to specify what programs should be launched when a user logs in. Login items stores an absolute path to the applications it should launch at login time, which rather sucks.

The items in /system/library/startupitems and /library/startupitems are for system-wide stuff, from what I can see, and I'd like something that launches only when a user logs in (there may be more than one user on the machine).

[Millennium]

Well, the real problem is that the Login items is the only way I'm aware of to specify what programs should be launched when a user logs in. Login items stores an absolute path to the applications it should launch at login time, which rather sucks.

The items in /system/library/startupitems and /library/startupitems are for system-wide stuff, from what I can see, and I'd like something that launches only when a user logs in (there may be more than one user on the machine).

Agreed; this is a problem. Hopefully, Apple will fix this for 10.1; this is a pretty big issue.

In the meantime, however, there is a way to hack around it. If one were to create a ~/Library/LoginItems folder and put items in it, a small app (just an AppleScript might even be sufficient) could then open everything in that folder. Put the script into the Login CP, and it could then take the place of that part of the Control Panel. You lose the ability to auto-hide things, but there's nothing that can be done about that, if you really want to keep a "direct-manipulation" interface.

Logout items could probably e implemented in a similar manner, but I don't know how to set up anything to run when a user logs out. If that could be figured out, then one could even use the same script with a trivial modification (just change the folder you're using).

OK, so it's not absolutely perfect; you still have one app with an immutable location 9the script itself). However, it's better than having all the items be unchangeable, no? And you could bury the script someplace where a user isn't likely to modify anyway ("/Library/Application Support" would be a good spot for it).

[Developer]

I have an application I'm developing which by default should run automatically when they log in. I can add myself to the Login items list, but it it wants a full path name.

Guess what happens if the user decides to move their app somewhere else? Login items won't find it, and it'll fail to load.

I hope you did report that as a bug.


Developer

[moki]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>In the meantime, however, there is a way to hack around it. If one were to create a ~/Library/LoginItems folder and put items in it, a small app (just an AppleScript might even be sufficient) could then open everything in that folder. Put the script into the Login CP, and it could then take the place of that part of the Control Panel. You lose the ability to auto-hide things, but there's nothing that can be done about that, if you really want to keep a "direct-manipulation" interface.
</STRONG>

Yeah, I was hacking around trying to get that to work actually. I noticed that loginwindow is just an "unbundled" macho binary with a Resources dir, so I tried this:

I made a dir and shell script in /Library/StartupItems/ then I put my raw binary and the Resources folder in there. The shell script simply runs the binary if the proper flag is set in /etc/hostconfig (very similar to how Apple's StartupItem shells scripts operate)

Alas, there's aparently the system isn't in a state where it can launch my app properly (it did work from the commandline when I tested it) -- it displayed my loading message, then hung there. In fact, I had to zap PRAM and boot to OS 9, only to find that my OS X partition is now apparently hosed. Disk First Aid can't fix it.

Anyone know any decent drive repair utilities?

[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: moki ]

[Mactoid]

Yeah, that login thing is definatly a problem that Apple needs to fix. I'm guessing that it is a work in progress due to the exclusion of the logout items, which I distinctly remember reading somewhere that they intend to implement.

Of course, assuming that the finder can actually find it, the program will run just as well anywhere you decide to put it.

[Mactoid]

and btw moki, did you try DiskWarrior for your HD? It saved me a few times under OS 9. We're talking some seriously hosed directories. lucky for me, version 1 got released right after the first time my iMac got fscked.