[tor-bugs] #4261 [Tor bundles/installation]: Use .dmg rather than .zip for Mac OS X

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki torproject-admin at torproject.org
Sun Jul 22 01:40:00 UTC 2012


#4261: Use .dmg rather than .zip for Mac OS X
--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Reporter:  ioerror                   |          Owner:  hellias       
     Type:  task                      |         Status:  needs_revision
 Priority:  normal                    |      Milestone:                
Component:  Tor bundles/installation  |        Version:                
 Keywords:  tbb-usability             |         Parent:                
   Points:                            |   Actualpoints:                
--------------------------------------+-------------------------------------

Comment(by greg):

 Replying to [comment:28 hellais]:
 > Replying to [comment:22 Sebastian]:
 > > No, this isn't merged because it doesn't make sense. .dmg files are
 for applications which get dropped into /Applications, which TBB should
 never be on any system with more than one user. People who separate an
 admin account from their normal account (like sane people should) are
 always surprised when their TBB doesn't work right for them if they put it
 int /Applications, or C:\Program Files on Windows, etc.
 > >
 >
 > If the issue is the fact that the application ends up installed for all
 the users of the system instead of putting an icon shortcut to
 /Applications we can put an icon shortcut to ~/Applications. This is done
 by a few applications on OSX and it's the equivalent of doing an
 installation of an app only for that user.
 >
 >
 > > Also note that for the computer illiterate, the default behaviour of
 Safari is to "open safe files after downloading", which means people will
 automagically have the extracted file in their download directory, already
 extracted. No .zip file wrangling necessary. I absolutely agree that .dmg
 is the proper way to distribute normal applications on osx, but TBB is not
 a normal application like all the others. We could fix that, but by doing
 so we'd need to accept that there's no way to confine TBB to one single
 directory anymore. That's probably what we should do anyway, as the
 portability aspect is much less important now that we force TBB for
 everyone rather than have the possibility of the Vidalia bundle; but
 that's a separate discussion (which we should have, asap).
 >
 > What is the difference with running TBB from ~/Applications compared
 with running it from your ~/Downloaded directory? In the second it just
 pollutes a directory that is uber polluted already and the user actually
 looses track of it.
 >
 > It's also worth noting that the default behavior in Safari for unzipping
 files automatically makes you end up with the .zip file inside of your
 trashcan. The user may not be aware of this and could lead him into
 getting into trouble.
 >

 A typical user expects TBB to act like an application. As long as they can
 navigate to their "Applications" folder, and click on something that
 launches the TBB, they will be happy.

 I understand there are technical constraints here, but users have a
 preconceived notion about how software installation occurs. They may not
 be familiar with concepts like a user directory vs a system directory.

 If having TBB installed systemwide is an issue, by all means, avoid it at
 all costs.

 But we should have the installation process be as similar to any other OSX
 application.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4261#comment:31>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online


More information about the tor-bugs mailing list