As I understand it .deb and .pkg.tar.pz a different packaging systems. Deb I somewhat understand, but even google didn’t help me much when it comes to .pkg.tar.pz. - how popular is this? Is it enough to provide a .deb package?
I never used Mac, not even a iPhone, never, ever… so I’m totally lost on what should I ship. The .app folder has a whooping 123 MB, while the installers for other systems are about 70-80MB, the zip seems to be the same as the .pkg directory.
Is there any point in providing a installer for Power PC?
I haven’t actually used the pdeploy yet myself, however:-
deb - Installer for debian based Linuxes (including Ubuntu, which is very popular)
pkg - Arch Linux. Not hugely popular I don’t think?
I would generally expect to provide pure binaries/executables (i.e. a compressed directory) for Linux as well, to provide support for Linuxes other than these. But you could get pretty far just providing the .deb
regarding OS X, if I remember a common approach is to ship the “.app” directory within a compressed “dmg” file. The user then opens the dmg file and drags the “.app” to where they want it.
This is a side note, but I’d like to mention it for safety’s sake: Do you have testing facilities available for your OSX builds? You say that you don’t use OSX, and I’m inclined to be hesitant to ship a build on a platform for which it hasn’t been tested.
If this has already been considered, then my apologies; either way, I now leave you to your regularly scheduled thread.
Don’t ship a build you haven’t tested. Really, it’s a bad idea all around. Worst case, ask around to see if any OS X user might be willing to test it.
Let me walk through them:
Windows:
.exe: NSIS installer. Needs no explanation, I presume.
Linux:
.deb: Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu is probably the most popular gaming distro for Linux.
.pkg.tar.gz: Arch Linux. I added this by request. It’s fairly popular among more hard-core Linux users. However, this package might be useful for users of other distro’s since the Arch Linux package format is so straightforward.
I don’t think I need to explain the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Linux.
Mac OS X:
.app: this is the app itself. It is typically on the system like /Applications/Something.app which can just be double-clicked to launch the app, though you can launch an app from any directory.
.pkg: install wizard. Double-clicking it opens an installation wizard which (after license confirmation, if any) simply installs the .app into /Applications and as such is is perhaps slightly more convenient than the above option, but less ‘portable’ in some sense.
.zip: above installer, packaged as a zip for easy distributing - purely convenience.
Many OS X users dislike the use of install wizards, but prefer distributing an .app that the end-user just drags to his “Applications” icon in the dock or in Finder. But the install wizard makes it slightly easier, perhaps, and also allows showing license text that the user has to agree to. This is why both options are available.
The .pkg contains a compressed version of the .app, which is why it’s actually (counter-intuitively) smaller. If you were to compress the .app into a .zip file or whatever, it would probably be smaller than the .pkg.
The PowerPC option is for older macs. Nowadays, most macs are built on Intel architecture, so if you have no way to test PowerPC, there’s no point in shipping it. We don’t heavily test for PowerPC either, so there may be more bugs present. We plan on dropping it in the foreseeable future.
ms win8 tablets are on market now. it’s windows + intel platform, only difference is, sometimes, one has to rely on touch events, no mouse or keyboard. can panda3d work in that?
