Mac Installer?

[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?

[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?

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

[WytRaven]

blendigo installer.zip auto-decomps and launches installer right out of safari post download

[WytRaven]

indigo sparseimage.gz auto-decomps, mounts, and open finder so one is ready to drg'n'drop to Applications.

[Whaat]

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.

[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.

[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

[Jeff Hammond]

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?

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)

[pixie]

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