Bugzilla: are any Installer bugs relevant to OS X?

[Frank Nospam]

If Mach-O gets an installer app some day, would it share any code
with the old Classic installer?

There are dozens of open bug reports involving problems with the
Mozilla installer for Mac. Given that all OS X builds (both CFM
and Mach-O) are sent as standalone applications inside .dmg,
should the bugs be RESOLVED WONTFIX?

-F.

[Steve Dagley]

Yes, Mac installer bugs are WONTFIX fodder. The Mac installer code was never
Carbonized and there is no intention to ever change that.

--

Steve Dagley
Member of the Technical Staff, Netscape Communications
Macintosh Perfusionist
(All opinions expressed are my own yada yada yada...)

[Rob Brandt]

This is a shame. I've been working on using XPInstall as a standalone
installer for my cross platform application (not netscape or browser
related) and I have to say it's awesome, at least the Windows version.
The Mac version is not up to snuff but is still useful.

I assume that development will not continue because the OSX paradigm of
installation is to simply drag a folder over. But that's too complicated
for many users who need to update only certain components of an
application (which happens frequently with my app). For example, in my
installer I install a complete copy of XPInstall as well, and have an
install option called "update"; which downloads an xpi package
containing all the files that have updated since the last major version.
To update their application, all they have to do in double click on
XPInstall, select the update option and go. They don't have to visit my
web site, locate links, do a download, figure out where they downloaded
the file to, figure out how to unzip/unstuff/unbin/un-whatever, locate
the installed software, move files, etc. XPInstall makes it brainless
for them (and some of them need that). I've even included a component
that just updates the XPInstall config files, so if a new option in the
installer is really needed they can update that, without having to do
anything manually.

I realize that this may not be an issue for Mozilla/Netscape. I'm
considering sponsoring/organizing/managing/recruiting for a fork, since
it's an open source license. I don't do c++ myself. Any advice for
finding like minded people?

Thanks

Rob