On November 29, 2003 at 16:58, Lasar Liepins wrote:
I am currently working on a graphical
frontend for MHonArc for Mac OS X.
(A very preliminary screenshot can be seen here:
http://liepins.de/backspace/img/macmhonarc .jpg )
In the course of this I would like to make
a MHonArc installer for OS X so those with
a comamnd line phobia can install MHonArc
with a few clicks.
Nice!
Since I dont want to expose the user to
having to enter paths of any kind, I
executed the install.me file, set all
paths to new directories, and am now
planning to just copy the files to their
correct destinations in my installer
(which I am creating with Apple's
PackageMaker). Since as far as I know
things like the Perl path should always be
the same under any OSX install, I think it
should work.
Probably. For the RPM package of MHonArc, Perl is assumed to be
in /usr/bin. For those that want a different path and want to use
RPM, they have to use the src RPM to change that path.
You could either do a search for common locations to see where
perl is. At a minimum, and if possible, try to verify that
perl at least exists where you expect it.
Any ideas on this, anything
else I should consider?
If there is option where a person could do a more advanced install,
it would be nice. However, if your target is regular OS X users,
keep it simple and then later on try to add more flexibility.
The documentation would sit next to the
installer document in the archive that
would be distributed, as putting it in
some predefined directory isn't such a
good idea under OSX.
Whatever works for OS X. For the Linux RPM package, I
followed the common convention of Linux distros to put docs in
/usr/share/doc/<package-name>.
If OS X has its own convention, then follow it. If not, then
do what you think is best. Either way, the user should have some
indication where the docs have been placed.
I'd be happy to share this installer with
the MHonArc community of course, and also
to maintain new installers for new
releases as they come out.
Great! You may consider subscribing to the mhonarc-dev list and
any future technical discussion can be carried out on that list.
A note about the install.me file: On OS X
it tries to install the documentation into
//doc/MHonArc (yes, with the double slash)
by default. The directory /doc does not
exist under OSX. And frankly I have no
idea where such documentation should go in
OS X.
The "//" probably occurs because the 'prefix' value in perl's
Config.pm is set to "/".
If I recall correctly, OS X is based on FreeBSD, so I am guessing there
is similiarities in file path structure. You should be able to install
everything under /usr/local like a regular Unix-type installation.
Therefore, documentation would go under /usr/local/share/doc/MHonArc,
and all other files would go under /usr/local:
bin: /usr/local/bin
lib: /usr/local/lib/MHonArc
man: /usr/local/share/man
doc: /usr/local/share/doc/MHonArc
P.S.: What does MHonArc stand for, anyway?
The M i guess is for "Mail", and Arc for
"Archiver", but what's Hon?
See <http://www.mhonarc.org/MHonArc/logo/>, or the logo directory
of the distribution.
--ewh
