[Sugar-devel] Bundling libraries, RPMs? (was Re: WatchMe-1, a VNC activity)

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Bert,

On 18 Aug 2009, at 09:10, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On 17.08.2009, at 23:34, Gary C Martin wrote:
>
>> For the Mac users, it's just "Drag this application to your
>> application folder." Done, end of story. For the worst application
>> offenders (and there are some, usually some of the big corps who can
>> get away with it) the user is asked for their admin password, but  
>> this
>> always looks like shoddy, dodgy application development from
>> developers who don't really know what they are doing on a Mac.
>
> Gary, this is highly unfair to Mac developers.
>
> Self-contained bundles can be installed just by drag-and-drop  
> indeed. But you need an installer (which might ask for an admin  
> password) to integrate with the system, e.g. to install QuickLook  
> plugins which generates previews for your documents, or SpotLight  
> for indexing. And obviously the "big corps" do define their own  
> document types, and want them to integrate with the system. Users  
> expect them to.
>
> E.g., Etoys needs an installer on the Mac to put its web browser  
> plugin in the right library folder. It does nothing "evil", the main  
> app could as well be installed by drag-and-drop, but we can't expect  
> everyone to manually install the plugin. Also, the plugin needs to  
> know where to find the app so we must require the app to be  
> installed into /Applications. And once we have a QuickLook plugin we  
> will need to install that too. Now you may call Etoys development  
> "shoddy and dodgy" all you like, but please blame it for its actual  
> faults.

Hmmm.... Sorry Bert, but pretty sure everything you mention above  
(QuickLook, SpotLight indexing, file document types/icons, web  
plugins) for can go in the users ~/Library with absolutely no need to  
request admin permissions for the whole system (affecting all users).

I agree you might want to use an installer rather than drag and drop,  
though first run of an App could put these extras in place as needed.  
As for hard-coding a path to /Applications, you can ask the system to  
tell you the path to the application bundle, but if I remember, there  
are a few cases where even Apple slips up on this one (and I'm sure  
causes no end of bug reports and support calls for Apple when folks  
system upgrade after moving such an Application) – so I won't diss you  
too much for that hack ;-)

Also as an alternitive, if you have control of the file format bundle,  
QuickLook previews and SpotLight indexes can also live there, though I  
understand that you'll likely want to keep with an existing cross- 
platform file format that can't take advantage.

So I'd say Etoys could just be a single drag'n'drop Mac application  
into Applications folder (that does it's extras on first run, MS Mac  
apps do this quite a bit), or at the very least a regular package  
installer with no need for the admin password.

Apologies for the off list topic reply.

Regards,
--Gary

P.S. So, can I have a job now making Etoys truly Mac friendly ;-)