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I've put together my very first package with PackageMaker (for a system service), but I am not happy about several faults:

  • Frequent crashes while applying target permissions to my source files
  • Package source files are not automatically or easily refreshed
  • File filter does not work

Is there something else out there more capable of this task? Free is not a requirement.

Peter Mortensen
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Stu Thompson
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5 Answers5

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Yes it is, and yes it's buggy. Apple uses the command line version pretty much exclusively so the GUI tends to have the feeling that it's been slapped together by a summer intern and never tested.

Azeem.Butt
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    It is really good to hear that it is not just me. *"it's been slapped together by a summer intern and never tested"* Exactly! – Stu Thompson Oct 21 '09 at 17:29
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    Good guess, you are right, PackageMaker was maintained by summer interns. I knew one of them ... That I kinda wanted to hurt him goes without saying ;) – catlan Aug 03 '12 at 15:17
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PackageMaker is the standard, for things that need an installer (many regular applications just use a DMG, often with a background image telling the user to copy the bundle to /Applications - eg Firefox does this)

MindVision VISE is a commercial solution you can look at, used by some people, but personally I think the look & feel of the resulting installers is subtly wrong (and slightly retro) - that's a subjective viewpoint of course.

Package Maker works pretty well for many people - though documentation is rather scant; are you sure the problems you're experiencing aren't fixable?

James Turner
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  • The situation has gotten worse: It cannot run scripts on Snow Leopard during the installation, which I require. (I've another question here on SO about that.) So, at this point, *no*, I can't live with PackageManager as is. – Stu Thompson Oct 21 '09 at 17:33
  • PackageMaker (or really, Installer.app) certainly *can* run scripts on Snow Leopard during the installation - it's a standard feature. Is there something unusual about your setup that might be affecting the results you're getting? – James Turner Oct 22 '09 at 11:42
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    Yes and no. To ensure that it was not what my package was doing, I made a simple test case: I created a fresh package, had it install a static file to Documents, and had it run a script that consisted only of "touch /Users/stu/hi.txt". It installed file file yet the script did not run. It's been a few weeks since I did this, I will revisit. Any thoughts would be appreciated. – Stu Thompson Oct 23 '09 at 08:22
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There (now) is a great free alternative to PackageMaker with the simple name "Packages": http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html

It's really easy to use, very stable and mature and even open source (in case you need to hack anything). Plus: it has a well written documentation!

codingFriend1
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I had the same problem until I added #!/bin/sh at the top of the script. Apparently PackageMaker needs it; I wish the log was a bit more clear about it.

IHIH, Oren

OZG
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Since Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard it is recommended to use pkgbuild and productbuild instead of PackageMaker.

Community
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catlan
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