[Ohrrpgce] .dmg format for Distribute Game on Mac

[James Paige]

Oh, yes, I know that extensions don't really matter on Mac, but users still
use them to figure out "what is this file" even if the OS doesn't.

And to an untrained eye, a renamed .iso is indistinguishable from a real
.dmg because they have the same icon and they behave the same when you
double click them.

But your point is taken :)

The .pkg idea is interesting! I'll read up more on that. Thank you!

---
James

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 8:17 AM, <ziggythehamster at outlook.com> wrote:

>  MacOS X doesn't primarily rely on file extensions. Renaming an ISO to
> DMG doesn't do anything. You could rename it .jpg and it'll still be an ISO
> disk image.
>
> You pretty much have to use hdiutil on a Mac to make DMGs. You would have
> better luck making a .pkg (really, the gzipped variant) that installs to
> /Applications. I believe all you need to make a .pkg is gzip, cpio, and an
> XML plist creator. All of which work on every platform.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 7:26 AM -0700, "James Paige" <
> Bob at HamsterRepublic.com> wrote:
>
>    Annd. I remembered why that wouldn't work. No compression. I feel like
> TMC discovered all of this years ago, and I am just now remember what he
> said and thinking that I am figuring it out myself ;P
>
>  Would a zipped dmg be more or less confusing than a tar.gz?
>
>  Also, is anybody even getting these mailing list posts? I never get
> copies of my own, so I don't even know if the list server is working right
> now.
>
> ---
>  James
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 3:01 PM, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
> wrote:
>
>     I just discovered/remembered something really nifty.
>
>  So the reason we went with .tar.gz on Mac was because we couldn't figure
> out how to create .dmg files.
>
>  .dmg files are normally Disk images formatted as HSF+ and although tools
> for formatting as HSF+ exist on Windows and Linux, we could not find any
> good simple ones that we could redistribute.
>
>  Turns out that the important thing about a .dmg file is that it is a disk
> image. HFS+ happens to be the preffered format, but any format supported by
> Macs should work.
>
>  In particular, .iso works.
>
>  I tried building a .iso image, renamed it to .dmg, and my Mac was able to
> open it smoothly with no problems at all.
>
>  Tools to generate .iso images are far more ubiquitous, so maybe we can
> find one that we can redistribute and we can use it to build .dmg files
> directly from the Export Games menu :)
>
> ---
>  James
>
>
>
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