[PD] Re: [PD-announce] MacOSX installers for pd 0.36 and pd 0.36 extended (CVS)

[Adam Lindsay]

Hi Chris. (hope you don't mind my replying to the reflector)

chris clepper said this at Thu, 12 Dec 2002 13:01:06 -0600:

>I just tried your installer and it works fine, except for one BIG 
>problem: it installs pd to a very bad location.  /usr/local/ is not 
>the place for Mac OS apps!!!  It essentially makes pd vanish from the 
>user's Finder, and then becomes a very command-line driven app. The 
>installer should either ask the user where they want to install pd or 
>put it in /Applications.  This is a much more familiar way to install 
>a Mac OS app, and if you choose Applications as the only location, 
>then you don't have to search the user's drive when installing other 
>packages.

A correction: /usr/local/ is not the place for Mac OS Application
Bundles. Lots of command-line apps live in /usr/local/.

This brings us back to the discussion on the reflector a week or so ago.
I strongly feel that there is nothing* in the pd directory that is worth
ordinary users seeing in the finder. Mac users tend to fiddle and
organize, and could easily break pd in umpteen number of ways. That's a
big part of the premise behind Application bundles in Mac OS X--hide all
the fragile internals from the average user.

Even a clever user would be hard-pressed to do interesting things with Pd
from the finder alone. Installing an external *could* be done, but it
would involve 4+ steps from each external or library to get the files in
the right place.

Pd is still a command-line program, for the most part, and to get subtle
and clever use out of the pd environment, you should know your way around
the terminal.

My goal for the next round of Pd changes in CVS will address paths,
perhaps coming up with a "complex" Pd path layout like the "complex"
linux one. Documentation paths should certainly be addressed.

I'm also idly curious about how to put Pd into a self-contained .app
bundle with Tcl/Tk. That would be really cool. Not sure how to do it yet.


But in the meantime, we have the double-clickable Pd.command in the /
Applications folder that people can get started with.

I'm glad the installer works, at least. I'm not sure I'm keen on making
another batch of installers until Apple fixes their unstable
PackageMaker.app. Ick.

adam



*almost nothing. Perhaps 5 html files that are also accessible from the
Pure Documentation menu (using the extended version).

>
>>Hi all.
>>
>>This is to announce two double-clickable Mac OS X installers for Pd: one
>>for the official, MSP-approved binary, and another for the unofficial,
>>Mac-friendly CVS build.
>>
>>Both installers:
>>- include a compact Tcl/Tk installation
>>- divide the Pd distribution into a number of sub-packages: (base, docs,
>>extra, and source/development)
>>- include an optional install of Dave Sabine's pddp because it's really
>>helpful
>>- automatically change the pd to root (and mode to 4755) for real-time
>>operation
>>- install a double-clickable Pd.command (no smiley-face icon yet) in /
>>Applications
>>- hopefully allow people to get started on Pd without touching the
>>command-line at all.
>>
>
>-- 

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Adam T. Lindsay                      atl at comp.lancs.ac.uk
 Computing Dept, Lancaster University   +44(0)1524/594.537
 Lancaster, LA1 4YR, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/593.608
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