[KDE/Mac] Re: How to deploy KDE Applications on Mac OS X

[Mike McQuaid]

On 30 Sep 2010, at 19:30, Bernhard Reiter wrote:

> Okay, this was on monster thread to read...

Yep, sorry about that but thanks for doing so :)

> After reading the thread, I tend to agree with Sjors' suggestion: 
> Create a graphical frontend to fink or macports and 
> as a second step  make it possible 
> to derive single installer look-a-likes from it.
> 
> I agree with you that most people will prefer a single installer. My knowledge 
> about the different technical properties of packaging for Mac OS X is quite 
> low. So I cannot help judging the various options in technical detail.
> I expect the fink/macports frontends to be one grade less comfortable
> even when bundled to an integrated installer.

The point is that most OSX applications don't even use an installer. They just provide a bundle that you can drag-and-drop into the Applications directory. Macports, Fink and Homebrew are not universally used on Mac, they tend to be used mostly for power users and ex-Linux users who want to run commandline applications or Linux projects that haven't been ported properly to Mac.

> Given that Free Software on the Mac needs to catch on and that it has a 
> different characteristic than the proprietary software offerings on that 
> platform, I guess it would be okay that Mac Users will have to be confronted
> with a package manager GUI, even when they only want a few application. I 
> guess they will end up with more, so this really promotes Free Software.

I don't agree that free software needs to catch on on Mac. I struggle to think of many large free software projects that aren't available on Mac. That vast majority of mainstream free software projects (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Eclipse, Adium, Qt Creator, Tweetdeck) do not require an installer. They are all distributed using drag and droppable UIs.

I don't think this promotes free software at all, quite the opposite. I think this just risks splitting software into OSX OSS and Half-Completed Linux Ports, with the latter being in package managers.

> Nevertheless once we have established a significant Mac user base, I think
> that now doing the rest of the polish into .dmgs, .apps, .pkg with Sparkle
> or whatever, will be much more attractive compared to the other improvement 
> possibilities. We even might find funding for it.

Packaging alone won't build a significant Mac user base. "The rest of the polish" here shares absolutely no code with the GUI installer approach, it will literally be a matter of completely throwing away the previous installers and reimplementing the packaging using the native tools you mention. Looking at the history of free software, this is only likely to fragment an already small KDE on Mac community.

I don't quite understand how, by your own admission, doing things an inferior way first will lead to a better end result. As I've said, there can be no worked shared between a Macports GUI installer and using native packaging.

> (I had hoped that Emanuel would have jumped in here explaning why we made the 
> choice of macports.) In the end I do not care if it is macports of fink, it 
> just have to fullfil the requirements. One requirement I have is that it must 
> be possible to at least bundle everything together so it is one download
> and that it must alternatively allow to install binaries. We did not fully 
> testrun this for macports, but it seemed to me that there are possibilities 
> for it.

I think only Fink allows binary distribution.

--
Cheers,
Mike McQuaid
http://mikemcquaid.com