Free software and the Mac

Stewart Russell scruss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Fri Apr 26 14:39:57 UTC 2013


Most apps don't need an installer. You just drop them into /Applications.
There's no DLL Hell or dependency issues; but you do end up with a lot of
code duplication. To delete an app, just delete it from /Applications. To
purge it, winkle out the preferences from ~/Library/Application Support
(yes, standard paths have spaces in them; ew ew ew) and delete that.

If you're installing a driver that came in a pkg file, things can be a bit
more fiddly. Worst of the lot is trying to delete a framework (kind of like
a library under Unix). Here is where the lack of dependency checking can
really bite you.

Cheers
Stewart
On 26 Apr 2013 10:10, "Thomas Milne" <thomas.bruce.milne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 8:03 AM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>wrote:
>
>> On 13-04-26 07:19 AM, Thomas Milne wrote:
>> >
>> > Do you mean when I try and use a downloaded file from my Mac on a Linux
>> > box? I hadn't thought of that.
>>
>> No, not that. Quarantine is the thing that causes the "XXX is an ....
>> downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to run it?" dialogue
>> on any file you download. It has no effect on Linux. It can have a weird
>> and unsuspected effect on some FAT filesystems, but unless you're
>> running CHDK on a Canon camera, you might not see that.
>>
>> What it can do, though, to files from archives you've downloaded and
>> extracted is cause the shell problems with executable files. If the file
>> won't run, but the permissions look like -rwxr-xr-x@, you've got some
>> additional file attributes you might have to clear.
>>
>> It's one of those “I wish it didn't do that” features.
>>
>>
> Ah, okay. Now that reminds me of something else that I just thought of:
> uninstalling apps.
>
> I read this and immediately think 'really?':
>
> http://guides.macrumors.com/Uninstalling_Applications_in_Mac_OS_X
>
> It's odd that Apple seems to have put zero thought into a process for
> uninstalling apps in OSX.
>
> --
> Thomas Milne
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20130426/d83f2481/attachment.html>


More information about the Legacy mailing list