flat packages

Joshua Root jmr at macports.org
Thu Mar 29 15:46:40 PDT 2012


So here's what I've pieced together (none of this seems to be explicitly
stated anywhere at all.) Please correct me if I've got any of this wrong.

* Flat packages on their own are considerably less capable than bundle
packages.

* The capabilities mostly come back (and you get a bunch of new ones) if
you build a Distribution containing your package.

* There is no (documented) way to get packagemaker to create a
distribution from the command line.

* You can however create a distribution from a flat package using
productbuild.

* productbuild is only available on 10.6+.

So my conclusion is that we should create a Distribution file and run
productbuild after generating an intermediate flat package, but only on
10.6+.

- Josh


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