I want to run a compiled program on OS X with minimal user interaction following download.
On Windows, you can download a .exe, and choose “run” directly, so that’s 1 click.
I’m not very familiar with OS X, and am not sure if I need a PKG, a DMG, or if there’s some way to do the equivalent of the “single shot” .exe.
I’m not concerned about the application installing correctly, etc. In fact, it would be desirable if it could delete itself after executing, but this is not a requirement. If the user needs to run it again, they can repeat the download and run process.
I understand running programs downloaded from the Internets is dangerous..
The typical way to distribute apps that don’t need an installer is a DMG. However, I’ve also seen examples where the .app folder is put straight in a zip file. If you download such a zip file which contains nothing but an .app, it seems Safari will automatically extract the zip file and replace it with the .app. The user then just needs to run the app, either from Finder or directly from the Download dialog, and confirm the question about running downloaded code.
Other browsers don’t seem to do the extraction automatically, but even so it’s pretty straightforward as extracting a zip file is as easy as running the app itself.