Repackaging Installer that creates a global login item?

[Chris George]

I have an application that I’m working with. It’s already distributed by the vendor as an installer package, which is great.

However, the tricky part is that in the postinstall for the package, it calls one of the programs that gets installed with a -install flag, which in turn adds a “global login item” (an “AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary” entry within /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist) on the startup disk, not the target disk.

Any suggestions for handling this?

[larkost]

Create you own package with a postflight (it runs on installs, and upgrades) and use either “PlistBuddy -merge” (more easily available on 10.5.1+) or “defaults write”. Once you get over the initial hurdles of creating installers and scripts this should be easy.

[Chris George]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: larkost[/u][p]Create you own package with a postflight (it runs on installs, and upgrades) and use either “PlistBuddy -merge” (more easily available on 10.5.1+) or “defaults write”. Once you get over the initial hurdles of creating installers and scripts this should be easy.[/p][/QUOTE]
Defaults write, as far as I found, cannot handle creating the dictionary entry required for a global login item. (The dictionary is a string key for the application to be launched, paired with a boolean key for whether or not to hide the application.)

I’m guessing that PlistBuddy can, but Apple says directly modifying the preference file is highly inadvisable, and that attempting to do so could break with a system update. Apple recommends using the official APIs (which doesn’t help from a postflight) or the LoginItemsAE apple event, which I’m guessing will only work against the active booted system.

I suppose I could use PlistBuddy for now, and if it breaks deal with it at that point, although that does tend to violate the spirit of InstaDMG.

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