[Pythonmac-SIG] Appscript Binary Installer Feedback

[Nick Matsakis]

Greetings.  I'm putting together a binary installer for Appscript and
friends --- instead of installing seven different components, it will be
able to be done in a single install without any dependencies on the
developers tools being installed.  The components being installed include:
appscript, aem, carbonAE, HTMLTemplate, LaunchServices, osaterminology,
and osax.

The basics of the install are simple, but there are a few subtleties that
have come up, and I would like to solicit some feedback from you all on
the following issues.

** Permissions **
Are there any special permissions that need to be respected?
Specifically, do .so files need to be executable to work properly?  Is
there a reason that any of the .py files should need to be executed as a
shell script?

** Licenses **
The installed components are licensed under the LGPL and Python licenses.
My reading of these is that we just need to have links to the source
versions on the same server that the binary is distributed from and we'll
be ok.  I wasn't going to have the user click-through a license agreement
when installing the software (I find these annoying myself).

** Documentation and Support Apps **
Unlike the Python software components, which must be installed in
/Library/Python/2.3, the helper apps (RenderTerminology and
AppscriptTerminologyServer) and documentation for Appscript can be
installed anywhere, or not at all.  In particular, I could envision a user
who wants to download and tweak/run an appscript but not actually write
appscripts himself.

There are basically two courses of action here, either install this stuff
automatically or have the user do a drag install.  In the first case, a
default location for these should be specified.  I would suggest
/Application/Applescript/Python  (/Applications/Applescript/Appscript is
another option, but I find the similarity between Applescript and
Appscript confusing).

My preference, though, is to _not_ install these components, but provide
them on the installer disk image.  Anyone who is going to write appscripts
should be comfortable with a drag install, and I generally prefer that
installers only install things that are required to go in a particular
place in the filesystem to work.

Comments?

Nick Matsakis