Installer and Documentation for Mac OS X are Poor

[WILL]

Now before someone with an installation of Linux on their system goes and tries to shoot me down here, I just want to say first, that I love Lazarus and think it's one of the best dev tools going for the Object Pascal world. However... The installer for Mac OS X is sub-par and is treated too much like a Linux distro.

Uninstalling Lazarus is a royal pain as well. The documentation showing all the files and their folder locations does not match where the files actually are. More specific, if you go to http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/OS_X_Programming_Tips#Uninstalling_Lazarus_and_Free_Pascal and follow these directions some of the files will be deleted and the rest of what it missed will remain scattered around your drive until you manage to find it all. This is not a good practice for Mac users to deal with. An uninstaller should accompany a proper installer.

I've been struggling myself to install Lazarus on my copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, to which the current stable version doesn't seem to support. I won't get into the details as I have struggled with it ever since I got my iMac early this last year and I can't really remember all the details anyhow.

I would like to start over again with a fresh installation of Lazarus, FPC and the FPC source, but sadly I have to go and find it all and I don't have proper documentation or an uninstaller to find it all. These tools would help a lot and I hope that they finally see the light of day in this project. I'm afraid that Lazarus isn't a complete solution for Mac OS X development until they do.

[marcov]

It's a wiki? You can enhance it yourself?

[WILL]

Wouldn't it be better if someone who actually creates the installer writes a list of these files and locations instead? They took the time to copy and write each and every file into the installer, why can't they at least provide us a list too?

How am I to know where each and every file in every distribution is going to install to? That's why I'm looking up the documentation. Some of the files name conventions don't even make sense such as ppc386, which is supposed to be the actual FPC compiler executable. I don't even know what that is really supposed to stand for, but I'd have to find it to be able to remove it let alone document it on the Lazarus wiki.

Who creates the installation packages? If I can get all the required information from them I'll update the wiki, sure why not. However I'm not too keen on sifting through the entire code repository looking for each and every file that might be on my system, who-knows-where... that's ridicules.

[Laksen]

Wouldn't it be better if someone who actually creates the installer writes a list of these files and locations instead? They took the time to copy and write each and every file into the installer, why can't they at least provide us a list too?

No matter what job it is, creating documentation always suck

Maybe giving some more information about what kind of files are missing would allow more users to help

Oh, and hi WILL(JSoftware here )

[WILL]

I've had my own experience trying to pry information from big open source development teams that wasn't really clearly provided before, so I pretty much did what I did before. I hacked into the snapshot of Lazarus DMG distribution package (I won't call it an installer, because it's not) to see if there wasn't some kind of file or set of data indicating where everything was going. Well low and behold, I found a uninstall.sh file.

Would be nice if this script was linked in some way to the Mac OS X UI wouldn't it? 

The script contents were...

Code: [Select]

#!/usr/bin/env bash

sudo rm -rf /Developer/lazarus /Applications/Lazarus.app /etc/lazarus /usr/local/bin/lazbuild

# end.


Now I'm not sure if this is everything for Lazarus, but it doesn't cover where all the FPC files are, of which are not all covered by that portion of the wiki that I posted above. Actually I would separate the instructions for the removal of Lazarus and that of FPC since the latter seems to change far more often than that of Laz it's self. Believe me this is something I'm thankful for. Nothing I have more than a program's files strewn all over many directories, especially when not documented or all accounted for in an uninstaller.

So is this all of the folders and all of the files for Lazarus on Mac OS X?

Oh and hi JSoftware!

[marcov]

Wouldn't it be better if someone who actually creates the installer writes a list of these files and locations instead?

I think most people in IT would recognize  a single point of failure?
 
It is always easier to blame someone else, but nothing will be done this way.

[jhvhs]

The files listed should are probably all of Lazarus. FPC is required for Lazarus to run, but it's not part of it. You might need to get rid of Lazarus, but keep the FPC (strange as it might sound).
I, personally am using FPC insalled via Fink, because that was the most easy way to get the cross-compilers I needed. That could be the reason why the FPC and its source are not included in the uninstall.sh.
As for Linux, I've installed Lazarus on Ubuntu recently and it took just a single click of a button to do that. (Same single click to deinstall). I haven't found the cross-compilers in the software center though, and it does not provide out of the box support for QT. But a simple basic installation/deinstallation is possible.

On a Mac, Installers are not very popular, and uninstallers are usually nowhere to be seen, that may be the other reason why there are no volunteers for the uninstaller project.

[Phil]

End-user apps on Mac generally do not have uninstallers - you just drag the app bundle to the trash. Many do not even have installers - you just drag the app bundle from the mounted package to wherever you want it.

Developer tools are a little different. Even Apple's Xcode can only be uninstalled by entering commands in a Terminal window. I'm not at my Mac right now, but these commands are probably running scripts.

In general the wiki topics are not written, edited or possibly even read by the Lazarus developers, with the exception of the hyper-prolific Felipe (look for his handle, Sekelsenmat, in a topic's history - he's probably been there before you).

I wrote the OS X Programming Tips years ago because at the time the information about Mac was mostly wrong and scattered, so I started a fresh topic. It would be great if someone went through it and checked it for correctness and up-to-dateness. If Lazarus includes its own uninstall script, that should be mentioned.

You might also check the .pkg file that each installer creates in /Library/Receipts and see if there's anything interesting there - it never occurred to me that there might be.

Things on the Mac, as you know, are done differently in many areas. I can't say why there are 3 installers instead of just one. Perhaps it's just historical.

Thanks.

-Phil

[WILL]

It is always easier to blame someone else, but nothing will be done this way.

No one is placing blame. I'm pointing out something that is missing that if provided would otherwise prevent all kinds of grief. If it helps the project why wouldn't the development team want to put it in?

You know open source software is a funny thing, everyone always wants the end users who have the problems with the thing to go and fix the very problems that they are having with it.

I don't have a problem with contributing to the Lazarus project. I really like the IDE and the project as a whole. I do however have a minor issue with a response telling me to go fix it myself when I'm not provided with the proper information nor a means to find it in the first place.

If you actually want people to join in on the development and documentation of Lazarus you might want to work on how you reply to criticisms. It's better to be constructive rather than defensive. Your posts have taken the latter and are of no use to myself or other readers of the forums.

I would like this issue fixed and am wiling to take part in doing so, but not if I'm just going to be shooed away because you don't like what I'm saying. So if you have any useful information, please offer what you know it'll be warmly welcomed, otherwise I don't see your posts as very constructive. Thank you.

End-user apps on Mac generally do not have uninstallers...

Yes, I'm finding that to be true myself. However wouldn't it be nice if some of them did?

Like you said, it's probably a historical thing, so why not we make changes so that the Mac OS X distributable is easier to work with? Meaning the uninstaller that is. I would be glad to write one if I was knowledgeable and had a working copy of Laz on my system, but I'm still working on that. I'm getting there though.

The documentation however, that is something that I can help out with, but I still need to know the deal with the files and their locations. According to jhvhs it likely is so I guess that's a place to start.


I have a Mac and I program exclusively in Object Pascal by choice. My goal in the next couple of months is to get back to developing software, but in Mac OS X instead of Windows. I also plan to develop exclusively on my Mac for cross-platform and iOS apps. So if the development team wants the Mac OS X port of Laz to get some more improvements, I'm willing to chip in to help it along to a user-friendly state.

[marcov]

It is always easier to blame someone else, but nothing will be done this way.

No one is placing blame. I'm pointing out something that is missing that if provided would otherwise prevent all kinds of grief. If it helps the project why wouldn't the development team want to put it in?

The reply was to a bit that pointed to a wiki needing updating. A wiki is an user editable document, without need to acquire much knowledge to do so. Actually the reason why it exists is BECAUSE users can edit it. My reply must be seen in that context, and there is no reason to drag in all of Open Source.

Developers often use grassroot information that is fixated in the wiki for improvements. For the problem report, there is the bugtracker.

[felipemdc]

I always do like this and it always works perfectly:

1> Install FPC

2> Download the latest Lazarus from SVN

3>
cd lazarus
make bigide

[Vincent Snijders]

It would be good, if a real Mac user would contribute code for an installation package for Mac OS X. I just have a ssh account on a Mac more than 500 km away, so I cannot develop for Mac OS X, I can just run installer build scripts.

Will, you are a Mac user, can you come up with something better? Please leave a patch in the bug tracker.

[WILL]

It would be good, if a real Mac user would contribute code for an installation package for Mac OS X. I just have a ssh account on a Mac more than 500 km away, so I cannot develop for Mac OS X, I can just run installer build scripts.

Will, you are a Mac user, can you come up with something better? Please leave a patch in the bug tracker.

I'd love to create an installer solution for Laz on the Mac, but sadly I cannot get it to work on my system. Otherwise I'd gladly write an installer and uninstaller that the Laz team can freely use (with source) to distribute Laz for Mac nicely. I've gotten my installation to the point where I can get into the IDE but I can't "Run" an application without the debugger crashing on me. I can build but not "Run" programs.

My jerry-rigged install of Laz is not yet stable enough to work with sadly and other that scouring the forums for more pieces of information I'm stuck. And to be honest, it's not from a lack of trying. Does anyone have any pointers to get me going here?

[Vincent Snijders]

What are you run parameters?

[WILL]

Here is the entire contents of my Run Parameters form under the 'Local' and 'Environment' tab...