Game installer/launcher

Question

Created Feb ’23

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Hi,

I'm trying to make a installer/launcher app for Unity game. It is written in C# with Avalonia UI framework. It is my first MacOS app. I have managed to sing and notarize the app and the game. And also to create signed and notarized pkg installers for both. When I run the installers manually the app and the game is installed correctly. From the app I can now start the game.

The issue I'm having is that I can not run the game.pkg from the app. I have used the Process.Start(path/game.pkg) but this would crash.

Is my approach possible? I'm attaching the entitlements files which I use in code signing process.

appEntitlements.txt

GameEntitlements.txt

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Feb ’23

Are these .pkg files standard Apple installer packages? You should see the following:

% file MyPackage.pkg 
MyPackage.pkg: xar archive compressed …

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Answer 2

BojanKoprivica OP

Feb ’23

Yes, the output of the file command is xar archive compressed TOC: 4149, SHA-1 checksum I use this command, as part of the script, to make the package: pkgbuild --root $PATH_TO_APP --identifier $IDENTIFIER --install-location $INTSTALL_LOCATION --sign "$SIGNING_IDENTITY" $SIGNED_PKG

Answer 3

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Feb ’23

Thanks for confirm that.

What is your motivation for have two apps here? Most folks who ship Mac apps put everything in a single app. If there’s something about your code that requires a separate launcher app, you can embed the ‘real’ app within the launcher app so that the user only sees one item. That’s better than messing around with installer packages.

Also, once your app is self contained you don’t need to create an installer package at all. You can ship it as a zip archive or a disk image, which is a lot less ‘scary’. For more advice on that, see Packaging Mac Software for Distribution.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"