[Ohrrpgce] .dmg format for Distribute Game on Mac

Wed Jul 8 02:27:01 PDT 2015

clarification: meant Mac Pro, I still keep calling them all Power Macs

On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 4:21 AM, Michael Kidder <mkidder at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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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