[squeak-dev] re: Running Squeak on Mac OS X fails due to damaged file.

Craig Latta craig at netjam.org
Wed Oct 1 11:19:38 UTC 2014


> Now, are you saying those folks are supposed navigate down into the
> ./Squeak-4.5-All-in-One.app/Contents/hostDependentNonMac directory to
> look for the executable and .sh file?

     Well, getting them into .../Contents seems plausible, because it's
the only place to go from the root. (Of course I think it's silly that
Apple won't even let me put a README there, but it's still tolerable.)
>From there, getting them into a directory with a suitably-obvious name
seems reasonable (perhaps "LinuxAndWindows" is sufficient, to go with
its sibling "MacOS"). We could put a README in .../Contents as well,
explaining how to start Squeak in detail (all three sentences of it :).

     I did these things and updated the signed app[1]. Not sure how
squeak.sh got left out before, as I did test on Linux; sorry. Here's
hoping that the signing process, the zipping process, and the
Dropbox-upload-and-download process aren't messing with shell script
files. :)

     Personally, I still prefer the all-in-one approach. I think it's
still accessible for new users (that's the feedback I get from new
users, anyway). I think separate downloads actually become more
complicated for both new users and the maintainers over time.

     Each "per-platform" artifact effectively becomes a multi-platform
effort anyway, as each host platform becomes multiple platforms unto
itself (to support different versions of the host OS, e.g., Windows 7
vs. Windows 8, 32-bit vs. 64-bit, etc.). It ends up resulting in more
choices for new users to get wrong, and more structure for the hosting
maintainers to get wrong.

     Users lose the significant convenience of having a single artifact
to take between platforms. I actually do meet new users who care about
platform portability. We can also make the Squeak app manage multiple
user images, so users need not have multiple copies of the Squeak app
around just to run multiple images, nor need to understand any
conventions about the Resources folder. That makes having a single
artifact that can move between platforms even more valuable. The
web-based launcher in Spoon is my approach to that; I'm writing the next
version of it now.


     thanks again,

-C

[1] http://bit.ly/1CBwx1I

--
Craig Latta
netjam.org
+31   6 2757 7177 (SMS ok)
+ 1 415  287 3547 (no SMS)



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