Re: [RFC] Distro script for Mac OS X

[Per P. <per...@ma...>]

On Oct 21, 2004, at 19:16, Ethan Merritt wrote:

>
> How stable is this standard installer?

Very. Apple delivers OS X with it.

I probably should have been more precise previously

* The installer (executable) is part of the OS

* The installer package (as the one I'm creating for gnuplot) is just a 
particular file hierarchy (referred to as a bundle) that appears as a 
single item to the user. It contains the files to install, any scripts 
that need to be run during the install process and a description of 
where to put stuff etc.

* The "distro script" I wrote simply[1] build and install gnuplot into 
a temporary destination, creates the PDF documentation files etc. It 
then uses a third party utility to create an installer package (i.e. 
not an executable). The reasons to choose a tool other than the one 
supplied by Apple are several, all good and valid. Finally, it wraps 
everything up as a "disk image", a compressed format suitable for 
distribution.

* In addition to the files neccessary to create the install package, I 
also added a ReadMe file and a copy of the license.

[1] It actually makes a small change to allow gnuplot to be built on 
10.3 and deployed on earlier systems (stpcpy wasn't standard prior to 
10.3)

>
> If no one maintains the OSX-specific files in your new directory,
> will we risk losing the benefit of your work because the installer
> files themselves no longer function under Tiger or its successor?

Only if Apple decides to break every installer in existance.

The only problems I can see with future releases of OS X would apply to 
_any_ form of binary distribution, where you build on Y and deploy on 
Z.

>
> I'm not objecting to including it, but I'd like a better feel of
> how much benefit it is to future work.

Hopefully, a lot.

/Per