Re: Gtk-OSX (was: Website proposal for usability)

[Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com>]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
>
>> > It has certainly been explained that that is the situation on
>> > Windows, and I fully accept it. It's less clear that it should be
>> > the situation on OS X, with its *nix-type substructure.
>>
>> You have it backwards. It was from the GTK-on-OS-X people (well, at
>> least those that I have heard from) that this convention originated.
>> Only a bit later did the GTK+-on-Windows people (well, many of us, not
>> all) realize the same.
>
> I was interested in the logic rather than the history,

The logic is that despite its "*nix-type" infrastructure, this is how
Apple has intended ISV's to distribute software, and as a result, its
what users expect. You will rarely (if ever) see an OS X application
that has a list of prequisites other than a particular version of OS X
and perhaps some hardware. The notion that "too use this app, you also
need to have the FOO framework installed" just isn't something that
exists in the OS X user culture. People shipping apps for OS X package
up everything their app needs that isn't part of OS X itself. And yes,
this causes all kinds of potential security issues and all the rest
that Linux distributions hate about things like AppImage, but for
better or for worse, that is the way Apple wants things to be. It is
hard for it be otherwise without the kind of centralized repositories
that most linux distributions use, and faced with DLL hell as the
alternative, I guess Apple felt that the all-in-one package was the
best option. Regardless of whether it is or isn't, its what people
have come to expect.

--p