[Qt-interest] [OT] Politically Correct way to release an Open Source Qt Project

[Daniel Price]

DOS/Windows needed an installer infrastructure because the file system was far more basic. The old HFS filesystem introduced by Apple in '84 allowed a single executable file to contain both a data and resource fork. So an application could be entirely self-contained. Drag and drop was all that was required to install/delete that app.

Modern OSX extended this concept to .app bundles - folders that appear as single, double-clickable exectubles.

The problem with the installer concept is that it makes assumptions about your system's file structure and capacity. There's loads of installers from the 90s that won't work on modern machines because they don't understand disk capacities in excess of 4gb.

And no-one will EVER use a boot disk other than C: with their programs in C:Program Files, right?

Installers are notoriously difficult to write, involving permission issues, file system issues, pre and post run scripts etc etc.

They almost always leave your disk in a mess with old files, DLLs, registry entries and god-knows what else. Some apps feature uninstallers. Some don't. Some have questionable 'repair' features. Some monolithic installers (visual studio, Office) put restraints on what you can and cannot install and in what order and are the cause of many problems when something goes wrong.

> You mean as faulty as the concept of Mac *not* having an "installer
> infrastructure", which basically makes it impossible to cleanly
> uninstall an application (including all config/cache/whatever entries
> it ever did during its lifetime)? Which leads to the "standard task" of
> googling "Uninstall app Foo" (which then comes up with e.g.
> http://www.skype.com/intl/de/support/user-guides/upgrading/skype-for-
> mac/uninstall/) and requires then manual steps to cleanly uninstall
> Foo?

Skype is an excellent example of a bad installer.

And as someone else mentioned, any files that an app leaves behind on the user's mac are rarely more dangerous than preference plists or cache files. Bad registries and old DLLs are far worse.


>
> Ah no, *now* I got it: the user should *not care* what the app does
> (and does not) on a Mac, right Steve...
>
> ;)
>
> Cheers, Oliver (Mac user since a few months)
>
> --
> Oliver Knoll
> Dipl. Informatik-Ing. ETH
> COMIT AG - ++41 79 520 95 22
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