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Managed Installs

As described in “Overview of Software Delivery,” managed installs give you more control over the installation process, which, among other things, allows you to fine-tune the user’s install experience. However, when your product is made up of a single component that doesn’t need to be placed at privileged locations in the file system, such as /Applications or /Library, you should provide users with a manual install for your product. Manual installs are faster and easier to perform for novice and expert users alike. See “Manual Installs” for details.

Multicomponent products benefit from managed installs because you can specify how each of a product’s components is installed. Also, remote installs—which allow you to install products remotely on several computers on a network—are based on managed installs. For more information on remote installs, see “Performing Remote Installs.”

Managed installs provide these features:

• An automated install experience for multicomponent products

• Support for upgrading your product, which may require replacing only certain components

• Support for custom installs, which allow users to decide what components to install and where to install them

On a more detailed level, managed installs provide fine control over the installation process, including:

• The ability to perform operations before installing, such as:

  • Making sure the target system meets specific criteria

  • Requiring administrative-user authentication before installing components at privileged locations

  • Performing install operations, such as quitting an application to be upgraded or launching daemons (faceless applications)

• Control over details such as whether an install:

  • Allows the user to specify an alternate installation destination

  • Recommends or requires restart, logout, or shutdown after completion

  • Uses the ownership and access permissions of the user installing the product or those specified in the installation package

There are three ways of defining a managed install:

• Distribution packages let you define the complete install experience of your product. They also provide you with a great deal of flexibility for defining the install choices users use to customize an install. Distribution packages offer you and the users of your product the best installation solution for Mac OS X–based products. Distribution packages, however, can be installed only on computers running Mac OS X v10.4 and later.

• Metapackages provide some of the features distribution packages provide but can be installed on computers running Mac OS X v10.2 and later.

• Component packages contain a single product component. They are usually included as part of a distribution package or metapackage but can also be installed individually in computers running Mac OS X v10.2 and later.

The following sections describe the major elements of managed installs and some of their limitations.

Contents:

Packages
System and Volume Requirements
The Installation Process
The User Install Experience
Postinstallation Process Action
Limitations of Managed Installs

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