[Ohrrpgce] .dmg format for Distribute Game on Mac

Wed Jul 8 02:21:51 PDT 2015

http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/os-x-market-share-statistics-1-in-5-macs-still-unsupported/

It looks like 10.4 is a vanishingly small userbase. My developer buddy runs
one of the earlier Intel PowerMacs that came with 10.4 and even he can get
up to 10.7

On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 12:03 AM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
wrote:

> .pkg might be a good option. However it is OS 10.5+ only, while we support
> 10.4 too (hopefully; I don't know whether anyone has ever tested it).
> However dropping support for 10.4 seems acceptable, since a veeeery tiny
> number of OSX Intel users will stubbornly remain on 10.4. I have seen
> websites with software like firefox compiled or backported to those old
> versions, but I think it is mainly for PPC users.
>
> However the improvement of .pkg over .zip seems so small that it's not
> worth the trouble. Though I don't know what Installer can do; I don't think
> I've ever used it.
>
> The Mac app store is still very new, I would think there are very few Mac
> users out there who don't know what a .dmg file is. Is the app store
> actually that popular? I thought that there were extra limitations on
> programs in the app store, similar to iOS or the Windows Store, so that not
> all software can be distributed through it.
>
>
> On 8 July 2015 at 04:22, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>
>> I was concerned that .zip would not work because it discards the
>> executable bit... however, I just did a test, and it looks like I can
>> export a game as a Mac .app on Windows, zip it up, and copy it over to my
>> Mac, and it extracts and runs just fine. Apparently unzipping on Mac just
>> sets the executable bit on every dang file, so the .app still works just
>> fine.
>>
>> So maybe just zipping the .app up is the simplest thing we should do.
>>
>> My focusing in .dmg is because that is what I have come to expect for Mac
>> apps, but that is based on experience that is many years old now. These
>> days Mac users expect their apps to be in the Mac app store, so I imagine
>> that the average Mac user hardly ever sees .dmg files anyway.
>>
>> ---
>> James
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 8:52 AM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I had actually forgotten about the compression, so I've been looking
>>> into it.
>>>
>>> I was surprised to see on the man page for mkisofs that it can create
>>> HFS (not HFS+) file system images, because those are used by Apple for CDs.
>>> The .dmg file format is called UDIF, which is a wrapper around a file
>>> system image which may be HFS/HFS+, FAT, and so on. The HFS+ file system
>>> itself seems to be fairly well supported in Linux. Unfortunately the
>>> compression of an .dmg is added by UDIF, not HFS (though HFS also supports
>>> compression). And UDIF is undocumented and there are almost no 3rd party
>>> tools for dealing with it (I only saw ones for reading, not writing); the
>>> best I could find was http://newosxbook.com/DMG.html
>>>
>>> I don't think .dmg.zip would make much sense (Why not just use .zip?)
>>> even if it were true that OSX magically accepts .isos.
>>>
>>> On 8 July 2015 at 03:17, <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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>>>>
>>>
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