Comments on: Thoughts on application deployment

By: Karsten

Karsten — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:18:12 +0000

sure thing, but always creating two disc images is a bit of a pain. If diskutil could just decompress those disc images with a declaimer, then the user wouldn’t see it again anyway. But somehow this is not possible, so one either creates two disc images or one disc image for deployment and one zip for updating.

Karsten

By: Nehemiah

Nehemiah — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:14:12 +0000

isn’t sparkle’s usage to the discretion of the developer. Sparkle is an UPDATING framework isn’t it? If you’ve already deployed the app with the disclaimer then the updates shouldn’t require the same disclaimer.

By: Michele Balistreri

Michele Balistreri — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:48:07 +0000

I doubt there is a real advantage for using an Installer when none is needed. It would become pretty dangerous, even with an installer database to have every app use installers. Developers may start installing Frameworks outside the application package (with the new metapackages doing that may even save some bandwidth to the developer, which makes the risk even more plausible) and that may be the beginning of the DLL hell we all want to avoid.

Even if applications would remain self-contained (everything in its package) the installer would be one more step between you and your work and sincerely I don’t see why an Installer Database would bring joy to the user.

By: Jean-Francois Roy

Jean-Francois Roy — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:09:44 +0000

Starting with Leopard, Apple has shifted its guidelines and now recommends using Installer even for applications. Likely the goal is to move the ecosystem to Installer in order to have a usable Installer database on the system for uninstalling applications.

It should be noted Installer is far more powerful on Leopard than before. There’s a new flat package format that’s suitable for direct downloads, better and easier scripting, home folder or system wide installs, upgrade and downloadable packages (e.g. the user only downloads a metapackage, selects what he or she wants to install, then Installer grabs what is needed from the tubes).

I agree the experience of a carefully crafted disk image is probably a bit better than a carefully crafted Installer package. I’m not sure if that trumps a usable Installer database.