Help Compiling on the Mac
Archives Forums/MacOS X Discussion/Help Compiling on the Mac
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| Heya, I’m not a Mac person and I have what is hopefully an easy question. A friend of mine compiled my blitzmax game on his apple notebook and it runs fine. When he passed me the (what I thought was going to be a file) back, it was a folder (battlespace.app in this case). What do I need to do to this folder to make it ready for download from my web server? For example, does it need to be zipped (or equivalent), or somehow converted into a single file? What would be the normal process to make this ready for a mac user? Can someone give me the steps or at least point me in the right direction? Thanks, -Glen |
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| Mac applications are actually folders on a file system level with the suffix '.app', inside which any resources, icons and executable machine code is held. As Windows doesn't use this convention, it just sees them as normal folders which you can browse as you would any others (you can see inside applications on a Mac too, by right clicking the application icon and selecting Show Package Contents). Therefore, to distribute the application, simply zip the battlespace.app folder and it's contents, and upload it to your webserver. Mac users who will download it, will simply see your application inside the ZIP. |
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| To look more professional, if that's what you want, you can also package your app in a .dmg file (which can also be zipped). A .dmg is essentially a disk image, where you have your app and perhaps a release document. Mac Users are used to opening these, and then dragging the application icon onto their hard-drive, which in turn installs the app - assuming all the application data is stored *within* the .app folder. Another way, is to create an Installer, using Apple's Installer/Packager kit. The Installer is much like a Wise install, or an .msi on Windows, in that it steps you through a wizard during installation. Do a search on creating dmg's, or for using Apple's installer. |
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| Thanks for the good info and quick replies! -Glen |
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| I would avoid ZIPs altogether, as I've had some funny permissions problems and general weirdness after ZIPping stuff up on a PC. In my opinion, the best thing to do is have your friend compile the app, but then store it in DMG format (as Brucey mentions). There is also a compressed DMG format that is ideal for upload, so there's no need to use ZIP. As it sounds like you don't have a Mac yourself, make sure your friend tests the final DMG file to make sure that he can extract and run your game. Or, you could just upload it and post the link here, and we'll test. |
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| The folks are right, don't zip the .dmg file, nobody does that on that Mac. The DiskUtility in /Applications/Utilities can easily create a disk image file for you. Just put the .app in there and maybe even add a nice background bitmap. Whoever uses a Mac knows what to do with the .app folder. ;-) |
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| Thanks for the info. I had him create the file. If you could test it and let me know, that would be great. http://www.dirtwormgames.com/battlespace.dmg -Glen |
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| Cant be found... |
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| Sorry. IIS was not configured with the proper mime type for that file. It should work now. http://www.dirtwormgames.com/battlespace.dmg -Glen |
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| The disk image and game works for me. It's very well presented - well done. (Full disclosure: I haven't played the Windows version, so I have nothing to compare it with.) One comment incase you are not aware is that the BattleSpace Application uses the default Blitzmax icon. |
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| Works fine here too... |
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| Nice game! Best adaptation I think i've seen of asteroids. :) |
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| Nearly forgot why I was here... How do you create a .app file with all your resources inside? |
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| You need to copy them in either yourself, or perhaps as part of a build-script. |
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| Found this a little earlier... http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=73690 Just what I needed. :) |
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