[Ifeffit] Mac Installer

[Matt Newville]

Hi Paul,

Thanks!  I think the long name is fine. I'll change the download links
on the ifeffit page Monday morning (Chicago time).

For a Mac OS X auto-updater, I would recommend this as being somewhat
gentler than a cron job:   All Ifeffit/Horae applications run from
AppleScript icons first run the shell script
/Applications/Ifeffit/bin/iff_init.sh.  This (or .../iff_init.csh)  is
also but in startup files for Terminals (that is, .profile or .cshrc),
so that opening a Terminal and typing 'athena' will work.

Right now, /Applications/Ifeffit/bin/iff_init.sh sets environmental
variables for PATH, PGPLOT_DEV, etc and not much else.    It would be
simple to write a  'look for updates'  script (say, modified from
horae_update or the Windows updater, pointing only to the
cars.uchicago.edu site) and just run that to iff_init.sh. That way,
the updates would be looked for every time someone runs an Ifeffit
application (as opposed to the fixed frequency of a cron job).

This is essentially how the Windows updater work.  There, the script
also notes when it last checked for updates so that it doesn't run 10
times a day.   The Windows updater does a fast check for "is there a
new version" with a fixed url of
http://cars.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/updates/current.dat

--Matt

On 2/17/06, Paul Fons <paul-fons at aist.go.jp> wrote:
>   Hi Matt,
>  The Mac installer now has the somewhat long winded name
> ifeffit-1.2.8-Mac10.4_horae60_pkg.dmg .  I was wary of
> changing the name before as it will break the link on cars, but since you
> are hosting the various installers on cars as well, it would probably be
> best if to have a clear name so one could be sure the version is the same on
> both.  I thought it might also be prudent to have the installer for 10.3
> check the os version (using the gestalt value in the installer) so that
> incompatible versions don't get installed (the 10.3 perl and Tk will I think
> break on 10.4).  I should do the same for the 10.4 version as well.  I may
> be able to make the same sort of check for the 10.3 package installer as
> well using the package you built.  I can't, however, update the older
> installer to the new horae version as I don't have a 10.3 system to build it
> on.
>
>  Paul
> _______________________________________________
> Ifeffit mailing list
> Ifeffit at millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov
> http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit