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

[Oliver.Knoll at comit.ch]

Daniel Price wrote on Monday, August 02, 2010 6:35 PM:

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

In theory you could also "install" a Windows app in very much the same way, as long as all needed DLL dependencies are in the same place as the *.exe. In fact "Eclipse" is such an example: you just copy the content into a directory of choice, double-click the *.exe and there you go!

But I agree that the "one folder hides it all"-concept of Mac is very nice. :)

> The problem with the installer concept is that it makes assumptions
> about your system's file structure and capacity. ...
> Installers are notoriously difficult to write, involving permission
> issues, file system issues, pre and post run scripts etc etc. 

All this would off course be handled by "my" installer concept which would be handled on the "OS level" ;)

> 
> They almost always leave your disk in a mess with old files, DLLs,
> registry entries and god-knows what else.

Well, you could continue with every specific example of bad installers, but that would not make the "concept" of an "installation mechanism" bad itself. Or you could make every concept bad just by providing bad implementations thereof, but IMHO that is not a fair judgement of any concept. 

> Some apps feature
> uninstallers. Some don't. Some have questionable 'repair' features.
> Some monolithic installers ...

Okay, we got your point: There are crappy (Windows) installers out there, very much agreed ;)

> 
>> You mean as faulty as the concept of Mac *not* having an "installer
>> ...
> Skype is an excellent example of a bad installer.

HA! Gotcha! On a Mac Skype does NOT have an installer at all ;) Instead it is installed in exactly the way you favour. Don't believe me, huh? See here:

  http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/macosx/downloading/ (See "Need some help installing Skype?" - Step 3)

And yes, Skype DOES leave files behind, but exactly at those places as Apple recommends (AFAICT).

> 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.  

How is a "left-behind" DLL worse than cached data or config entries (plists on Mac)? I consider ANY file - or more general: "modification" - created or done by the application upon install/runtime bad!

And as far as "the user doesn't need to care" is concerned: yes, so why not just remove all those config/cache/whatever files? And YES, they ARE generated for most applications, mostly under ~/ApplicationData (sic!). And currently on Mac they are NOT deleted by any process except the "Google it up" manual process ("How to uninstall Foo application on Mac").

If Mac (or any other platform, for that matter which supported the concept of an "application folder with drag'n'drop installation") had a proper "installation mechanism", the OS X could as well trigger an "uninstall" process in the background (given the list of "registered components" which were registered upon "installation time") as soon as an "application folder" would be deleted from the "Applications" folder - so why not do it? And the more experienced user could still request a list of installed applications and de-install an application via "System Settings", with more options such as "Leave config entries" or whatever.

And as far as I know the Mac does not update installed applications either (except the well-known iWhatever apps installed by Apple itself), just like a package manager.


Oh well, I guess we are never to see such an "installation framework" on an "OS level" which would even be platform indepenendent (at least the "recipe" description for installing/uninstalling the application), but one might still dream, no? :)

Cheers, Oliver
-- 
Oliver Knoll
Dipl. Informatik-Ing. ETH
COMIT AG - ++41 79 520 95 22