Xcode for the Rest of Us
Pages: 1, 2, 3

Your Site-specific Content

Do you have special licensing or terms of service in your school or office? Will this new application need explanatory notes (i.e., ReadMe)? Here's an example of a ReadMe:

Figure 8. Sample ReadMe

I will include it in my project, along with a custom background picture (it's my English springer spaniel's turn to be a star).

Figure 9. Special resources for your personalized package

You can save the package to a server, your desktop, a USB dongle ... whatever makes the most sense in your environment.

Building and Testing Your Package

The Package Creation screen will begin to build your package.

Figure 10. Package Creation

You can now view the package, test it, or edit it. Hmm ... Maxwell is taking up too much of the screen:

Figure 11. Testing your package

I could go back and take out the corny picture. (Don't worry: Apple will supply a generic background for you if no picture is supplied. It's the one with the leaning pencils.) Maybe Maxwell's "15 minutes" aren't up yet. I will set other parameters to place the picture just right. Be sure to rebuild your package after making changes.

Ah, that's better!

Figure 12. Maxwell looking good (dog)!

You Did It

Now it's time to test your package. Go ahead and try installing it on your friend's machine. Isn't that cool? Are you still friends?

You are so proud of yourself. Unfortunately, your back-patting is short-lived: someone ''higher up" just tweaked the ReadMe file to include a small change on each line? Drats!

Boy, you could use FileMerge right about now! But that is a subject for another article.

Shelley Weiner is president of Business Rules, Inc., a technical training and Macintosh consultancy located in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York State. She is an Apple Certified Trainer, an Apple Certified Systems Administrator, and a member of the Apple Consultants Network.

Return to the Mac DevCenter

Post your questions and comments here.
You must be logged in to the O'Reilly Network to post a talkback.

Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.

• Nice, clear article
  2006-04-12 18:07:27  GarethMcClure [Reply | View]
  
  
  Thanks for creating a clear overview of the application, a pleasure to read :-)
• Nice, clear article
  2006-04-13 17:43:23  shelleyweiner [Reply | View]
  
  
  <blush> Thanks, Garrett. Great to know that you enjoyed the article.

• Having problems with PackageMaker
  2006-02-08 20:59:04  openart2001 [Reply | View]
  
  
  After following your procedures, I managed to create my file but upon installation, I either get the failure message, or I get the installation to proceed successfully but the file that I installed is not there.
  
  I am just trying to create a nice installation package for my AppleScript Studio program and its accompanying ReadMe file. For this, I tried to use the single package mode.
  
  What gives?
  
  Thanks for any tip.
• Having problems with PackageMaker
  2006-02-09 07:01:01  openart2001 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Alright. I am replying to my own query.
  
  The main problem was mistakenly using the same ReadMe file that I used as a resource, as the one that I included in the bundle.
  
  For those of you who might have the same problem, please keep that in mind.
  
  Thanks for nice article. It opened my eyes to a cool application that would otherwise have escaped my attention.