Forum Bugs

Improving the installation process on *nix systems (including OS X)

pfurbacher
The installer asks the user to specify the installation folder, or to accept the default, "/usr/local".

Ordinarily, one expects an installer to create a folder/directory with the name of the app or product, and install the app's artifacts into that. The Prince install script does not do that. It just unceremoniously dumps a "bin" and a "lib" folder into the installation folder, such that if you accept the default, you end up with
    /usr/local/bin
    /usr/local/lib

That's pretty nasty. It should be installed in a folder named "Prince", such that if the user enters "/Users/me/Applications", the result would be
  /Users/
    me/
      Applications/
        Prince/
          bin/
          lib/

Likewise, if the user accepts the default, the result is
  /usr/
    local/
      Prince/
        bin/
        lib/

The current install.sh script can be "fixed" rather easily. Everywhere you find $prefix/ replace it with $prefix/$PRODUCT/ (see attachment).

I think it might be useful to add the following to the end of the script to remind the user of the following:

echo "You should consider adding the path to the prince installation "
echo "to your PATH environmental variable"
echo ""
echo "Example: .bash_profile (OS X)"
echo ""
echo "   PATH=\$PATH:$prefix/$PRODUCT/bin"
echo ""
echo ""

  1. install.sh2.1 kB
    Modified install.sh file