Home › Forums › AFP548 Community › Projects › InstaDMG CS3 Repacker Idea
Hiya guys, I didn’t know where to put my ideas so I thought I would stick it here 🙂
I was trying to create a monolithic .pkg for CS3 via logGen/pkgGen/etc But PackageMaker would crash while adding the files. I thought about creating an .mpkg as someone had said but I think this approach is still a bit messy and as I’ve found out wouldn’t produce the correct database entries for PCD/CAPS (The product information databases used to determine the install/update status of each individual RIBS Payload).
First off I can say that Adobe probably won’t produce a .pkg’ed version of its creative suite stuff purely because the installer seems to act as an abstraction layer between the installation process and the underlying OS API. This means that Adobe can pretty much maintain one set of scripts for their installation process rather than having a mac team and windows team.
That said.. the fact that there exists a separation between the installation processing code (ExtendScript) and the OS API provided by Setup.app/Bootstrapper/Frameworks means we can theoretically switch out the binaries for our own code which, instead of performing the functions called by the payload, translates each installer action into either A. a file copy operation to our faux root package directory or B. a non file copy operation into the pre/postflight scripts – in the case of PCD/CAPS this would be an sqlite3 query.
I use the word theoretically a lot, but I’ve made a library which emulates most of the functionality already and have managed to install Adobe RIBS payloads into separated root directories. When these apps are packaged up and installed they will launch successfully (within an environment that already had the common/core tech components installed). So I guess i’m not completely crazy.. although this is a mega complicated way to solve the whole problem of packaging – but it is fun 🙂
As it stands I’m using 100% my own code to avoid any copyrighting issues, which is good and bad.. because its very slow going.
If anyone is working on something similar Id like to hear about it 🙂
In the meantime, thanks to all the devs for this wonderful script!