Re: Help creating and distributing a binary installer

On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 01:56:13AM -0500, Scott Klement wrote:
> >We may start using TN5250 for our users here. But before we can do this,
> >we need to create a binary install file for Mac OS X. As some may know,
> >this is somewhat like doing a FreeBSD version because of their related
> >lineage at the unix level.
> In FreeBSD, you can make a binary install package by typing the following 
> commands:
> 
>       cd /usr/ports/net/tn5250
>       make package

OS X doesn't do it this way. Installable OS X packages are made with
PackageMaker. A PackageMaker poject includes a tree of stuff to install, and
a few other files (including, optionally, pre- and post-install shell
scripts). You then tell it where to explode the tree you provide (for
example, you could have stuff destined for /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/etc,
and so on; you'd then tell it to explode the tree at /usr/local), and a few
other parameters.

Typically, the package file is then placed in an empty disk image file
(created with Disk Utility), and then shipped. When I build one of these, I
use a regular image file, and then convert it to a compressed image file,
which both compresses it (duh) and makes it read-only.