Re: Mac OS X installer

[Earl Hood <earl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On November 29, 2003 at 16:58, Lasar Liepins wrote:

> I am currently working on a graphical
> frontend for MHonArc for Mac OS X.
> (A very preliminary screenshot can be seen here:
> http://liepins.de/backspace/img/macmhonarc .jpg )
> In the course of this I would like to make
> a MHonArc installer for OS X so those with
> a comamnd line phobia can install MHonArc
> with a few clicks.

Nice!

> Since I dont want to expose the user to
> having to enter paths of any kind, I
> executed the install.me file, set all
> paths to new directories, and am now
> planning to just copy the files to their
> correct destinations in my installer
> (which I am creating with Apple's
> PackageMaker). Since as far as I know
> things like the Perl path should always be
> the same under any OSX install, I think it
> should work.

Probably.  For the RPM package of MHonArc, Perl is assumed to be
in /usr/bin.  For those that want a different path and want to use
RPM, they have to use the src RPM to change that path.

You could either do a search for common locations to see where
perl is.  At a minimum, and if possible, try to verify that
perl at least exists where you expect it.

> Any ideas on this, anything
> else I should consider?

If there is option where a person could do a more advanced install,
it would be nice.  However, if your target is regular OS X users,
keep it simple and then later on try to add more flexibility.

> The documentation would sit next to the
> installer document in the archive that
> would be distributed, as putting it in
> some predefined directory isn't such a
> good idea under OSX.

Whatever works for OS X.  For the Linux RPM package, I
followed the common convention of Linux distros to put docs in
/usr/share/doc/<package-name>.

If OS X has its own convention, then follow it.  If not, then
do what you think is best.  Either way, the user should have some
indication where the docs have been placed.


> I'd be happy to share this installer with
> the MHonArc community of course, and also
> to maintain new installers for new
> releases as they come out.

Great!  You may consider subscribing to the mhonarc-dev list and
any future technical discussion can be carried out on that list.

> A note about the install.me file: On OS X
> it tries to install the documentation into
> //doc/MHonArc (yes, with the double slash)
> by default. The directory /doc does not
> exist under OSX. And frankly I have no
> idea where such documentation should go in
> OS X.

The "//" probably occurs because the 'prefix' value in perl's
Config.pm is set to "/".

If I recall correctly, OS X is based on FreeBSD, so I am guessing there
is similiarities in file path structure.  You should be able to install
everything under /usr/local like a regular Unix-type installation.
Therefore, documentation would go under /usr/local/share/doc/MHonArc,
and all other files would go under /usr/local:

  bin: /usr/local/bin
  lib: /usr/local/lib/MHonArc
  man: /usr/local/share/man
  doc: /usr/local/share/doc/MHonArc


> P.S.: What does MHonArc stand for, anyway?
> The M i guess is for "Mail", and Arc for
> "Archiver", but what's Hon?

See <http://www.mhonarc.org/MHonArc/logo/>, or the logo directory
of the distribution.

--ewh