How does application installation work

macco

macco

Look above : it's me
Hi all,

As I am new to MAC, I have been enjoying it for the last 6 months. Until now I have been playing with the GUI look arund t he scripts, etc. I have to say that the OS X has been feeling :(( a little bit sad as I have mainly used the YDL and Ubuntu for working, I was and have been a Linux Geek for a long time now.

As Lately I have decided to port everything (the work) in X11 under OS X, I have spent some more time in OS X. I have to say t hat are lots of software outhere, free/share, etc.. but one thing I do not get...Probably I can look on the net and I can find the info for my questions but I also wanted to ask here.

How does it work, from the moment one drags the application one wants to to install in the Applications, I have seen that mainly no tediuos installations is needed and the software works imediattely. Probably a plist file is created and stuff. But more precisely what is the thread of action, etc. No that I complain but still ....

I am asking this as I am used to linux and configuring and stuff like that...

thanks a lot.
 
Because the applications are really packages. They're self contained, for the most part. That way, you only have to install one thing instead of a bunch of things for the app to work.
 
Mac OS X Technology Overview
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/index.html
Specifically, I suggest you click on "Mac OS X Architectural Overview" on the left menu, then "Mac OS X Runtime Architecture" under that. If you go through the whole doc it'll show you a lot of the internals.

Porting UNIX/Linux Applications to Mac OS X
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Porting/Conceptual/PortingUnix/index.html
Just in case you haven't seen this, it might be of help since you're porting *nix apps.
 
(Please use more specific thread titles. From 'How does it work' I was almost triggered to answer: "You have to pull string A through loop C in order to combine B and D.")
 
.apps are sweet, i first noticed something was up when I was in terminal and it was showing .apps as directories. Try control clicking on a app sometime and selecting Show Package contents.

Such a good idea.
 
Yap I have seen the Show package contents thing, COOL. Indeed nice.

Sorry for the ttitle issue, I will be more specific.
 
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