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Mac Installer?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 2:46 pm
by Whaat
I am not sure if its possible to write a Mac installer for an exporter. What's the best way to package an exporter for installation on a Mac? I see that Indigo on Mac uses a sparseimage file format that is compressed as a .gz file. Is there any advantage of this format over a standard ZIP file?

It would be simplest for me to package SkIndigo on Mac as a ZIP file. Is there a way that is more user friendly?

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:21 pm
by WytRaven
If it helps whaat Mac OS will auto decompress compressed files after download and then "execute" things it understands. So when i download said sparseimage.gz it gets auto-decomped and then mounted and autorun.

Make sense? :lol:

Actually just let me check that 'cause I may not be 100% correct (definitely does it with .dmg)

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:24 pm
by WytRaven
blendigo installer.zip auto-decomps and launches installer right out of safari post download

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:27 pm
by WytRaven
indigo sparseimage.gz auto-decomps, mounts, and open finder so one is ready to drg'n'drop to Applications.

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:47 pm
by Whaat
WytRaven wrote:indigo sparseimage.gz auto-decomps, mounts, and open finder so one is ready to drg'n'drop to Applications.
Really? I don't think this has been my experience with the indigo spareseimage.gz. I always decompress with Stuffit and then I have to mount the image by double-clicking. Before I downloaded Stuffit, when I double-clicked on the .gz file, OSX didn't know how to open the file. (if I remember correctly)

However, I always use Firefox on my Mac. Maybe that has something to do with it. I'll try it with Safari and see what happens.

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:56 pm
by WytRaven
I'm on 10.5.7 and using Safari 4. I don't have stuffit expander installed at all that I can tell. Not in my Apps folder or Apps/utils... If it's a third party util then I definitely don't have it installed.

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:16 pm
by benn
Dale, if you look at the blender repository - there is an installer there for mac - it uses PackageMaker - i think we could do something similair for skindigo :)

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:43 am
by Jeff Hammond
WytRaven wrote:If it helps whaat Mac OS will auto decompress compressed files after download and then "execute" things it understands. So when i download said sparseimage.gz it gets auto-decomped and then mounted and autorun.

Make sense? :lol:

Actually just let me check that 'cause I may not be 100% correct (definitely does it with .dmg)
that's actually a safari preference setting that allows this to happen.
Safari/Preferences/General/Open "safe" files after downloading

fwiw, most mac installers are packaged as a dmg which contain either the app for drag/drop to the applications folder or the actual install package (.pkg or .mpkg for example)

Re: Mac Installer?

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 9:53 am
by pixie
Jeff Hammond wrote:fwiw, most mac installers are packaged as a dmg which contain either the app for drag/drop to the applications folder or the actual install package (.pkg or .mpkg for example)
Install packages are for wosses :mrgreen: