Question

I’m making an installer for an OS X application, but have trouble understanding PackageMaker’s UI. My version of PackageMaker is 3.0.4, running along Lion and Xcode 4.1.

One option in particular gets me confused. It’s the “Include root in package” checkbox when editing the package’s contents. Depending on whether it is checked, some of my package’s contents are never installed anywhere.

For example, let’s say that my content is a single .app bundle, Confused.app. I want to install it to /Applications (the Destination). What exactly does “Include root in package” mean in this case? If it is left unchecked, the installer does absolutely nothing, as far as I can see.

Is there a better example case that would clarify the option’s meaning?

Answer 1

Given the case where the payload (i.e. source item to be installed) is Confused.app (which presumably contains a Contents subfolder with Info.plist, MacOS, Resources, etc inside that), and the install destination is /Applications:

• If you check the “Include root in package” option, it does what you probably expect, namely installs Confused.app into /Applications.
• If you don’t check the “Include root in package” option, it installs the contents of Confused.app into /Applications — i.e. you wind up with a /Applications/Contents folder. This is probably what your test without the option did.

The intended usage with “Include root..” disabled is that you’d create a proxy Applications folder on your build machine, designate that as the payload source, and place the app into that folder. This is more useful if you’re installing multiple apps at once, or installing to places other than /Applications (i.e. make a proxy root folder, create Applications and Library/Application Support subfolders, and set the install destination as “/”).