Portable Adium

[Gand]

I'm working on OS X portable applications and I wish release Adium one.
On wiky page I've read about manually edit info.plist:

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<key>Preference Folder Location</key>
<string>/Volumes/YourDiskName/</string>

I can determine working directory with:

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here="`dirname \"$0\"`"

Is there a way to make a script that automatically edit info.plist, before Adium start, with:

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</string>"$here</string>

so that Adium can be easily launch from any external device with a double click.
Thanks in advance.

[Gand]

Thanks to Caius's clues, here is the script:

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#!/bin/sh
here="`dirname \"$0\"`"
echo "Starting AdiumX from '$here'."
defaults write "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/info" 'Preference Folder Location' "$here/profile"
open "$here/app/Adium.app"
echo "Done!"

[evands]

Thanks to Caius's clues, here is the script:

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#!/bin/sh
here="`dirname "$0"`"
echo "Starting AdiumX from '$here'."
defaults write "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/info" 'Preference Folder Location' "$here/profile"
open "$here/app/Adium.app"
echo "Done!"

Neat. Can I add this to the PortableAdium wiki page?

[Gand]

On wiky page I've read about manually edit info.plist:

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<key>Preference Folder Location</key>
<string>/Volumes/YourDiskName/</string>

Something is going wrong.
I try to start portable Adium (from an USB thumb) on machines where it was never installed.
Before testing my script I follow the wiky How-to adding manually these lines to info.plist file:

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<key>Preference Folder Location</key>
<string>/Volumes/PortableMac/PortableAdium/profile/</string>

Where the tree of USB thumb is:
PortableMac:
/PortableAdium
/PortableAdium/profile
/PortableAdium/app/Adium.app
all folders are chmod 777

When I launch Adium.app I get errors message that these folders cannot be created:
Contact List, Emoticons, PlugIns, Scripts, Sounds, Message Styles.

Adium start but only "User" folder and "Login Preferences.plist" file are created in my "profile" folder.
It happens on 3 different machine all running 10.4.4.
The error message appears only the first time I start Adium, and never appears if Adium.app was already installed on the internal HD.

What is wrong? I did some mistake?
Thanks.

[evands]

I've never tried portable adium before.

I have no idea how resources ever worked for it Now fixed for Adium 0.88. A new beta (beta.adiumx.com) will hopefully be up soon and will include the fix for your testing.

[Gand]

I've never tried portable adium before.
I have no idea how resources ever worked for it Now fixed for Adium 0.88. A new beta (beta.adiumx.com) will hopefully be up soon and will include the fix for your testing.

Thanks, I've dowloaded Adium X 0.88b6 and manually editing info.plist work fine.
Now second step with the script, from man defaults:

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write domain key 'value'
                  Writes value as the value for key in domain.  value must be
                  a property list, and must be enclosed in single quotes.  For
                  example:

                        defaults write com.companyname.appname "Default Color" '(255, 0, 0)'

                  sets the value for Default Color to an array containing the
                  strings 255, 0, 0 (the red, green, and blue components).
                  Note that the key is enclosed in quotation marks because it
                  contains a space.

I've try all these solutions:

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defaults write "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/info" 'Preference Folder Location' "$here/profile"

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defaults write "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/info" "Preference Folder Location" '"$here/profile"'

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defaults write "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/info" "Preference Folder Location" -string '"$here/profile"'

and may other variants with single and double quotes (also Info and info), but the Info.plist file is completely messed up:

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bplist00ß
   

 !@A_CFBundleVersion_CFBundleHelpBookFolder_CFBundleSignature_CFBundleIdentifier_
CFBundleExecutable_CFBundleGetInfoString_CFBundleShortVersionString\CFBundleNam

Any idea? Thanks in advance, C.

[engla]

That's the binary format for plists. Convert it with 'plutil'

[Gand]

That's the binary format for plists. Convert it with 'plutil'

Thats mean that "default write" convert xml file to binary than it has o be reconverted to xml to work!
Well thank, I'll try.

[Gand]

That's the binary format for plists. Convert it with 'plutil'

Thats mean that "default write" convert xml file to binary than it has o be reconverted to xml to work!
Well thank, I'll try.

Yes, it work with this line:

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plutil -convert xml1 "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/Info.plist"

Thanks, now Portable Adium is out:
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/adium/

P.S. Update wiki.

[evands]

P.S. Update wiki.

Cool, done.

[memark]

Thanks, now Portable Adium is out:
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/adium/

Looks good, though you've forgotten to remove "Firefox" here:

2. Clicking "START Portable Adium.command" will launch a script that launch Firefox from your portable device.

P.S. Update wiki.

Cool, done.

The 'plutil' line is still absent from the wiki page.

[Gand]

Thanks, now Portable Adium is out:
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/adium/

Looks good, though you've forgotten to remove "Firefox" here:

2. Clicking "START Portable Adium.command" will launch a script that launch Firefox from your portable device.

Thanks, done.

P.S. Update wiki.

Cool, done.

The 'plutil' line is still absent from the wiki page.

The script is:

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#!/bin/sh

here="`dirname "$0"`"
echo "Starting Adium from '$here'."
defaults write "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/info" "Preference Folder Location" "$here/profile"
plutil -convert xml1 "$here/app/Adium.app/Contents/Info.plist"
open "$here/app/Adium.app"
echo "Done!"
echo "When finish, quit Terminal.app before eject your portable device."

P.S. FYI, next pApps to be done: Colloquy, Abiword, NeoOffice/OpenOffice.

[David Munch]

Do Xchat Aqua if you got a spare week please.. Would be awesome!

[Gand]

Know issues
Portable Adium will not copy on Mac OS standard (HFS) and File System MS-DOS formatted volume.
Could Mac OS standard issue solved?

[Gand]

Do Xchat Aqua if you got a spare week please.. Would be awesome!

Each app that have the profile folder path setted via script could be portable.
I'll ask to Xchat Aqua dev. Also Colloquy could be nice.

[evands]

Know issues
Portable Adium will not copy on Mac OS standard (HFS) and File System MS-DOS formatted volume.
Could Mac OS standard issue solved?

What are the problems?

[Gand]

Know issues
Portable Adium will not copy on Mac OS standard (HFS) and File System MS-DOS formatted volume.
Could Mac OS standard issue solved?

What are the problems?

Adium.app can't be copied over a USB thumb formatted as Mac OS standard (HFS), it can be copied only on Mac OS extended format (HFS+)

See also this thread on MacUpdate

[evands]

I don't know what would be the problem. If you can point out what file or files within the bundle cause the error, we'll try to correct the situation if possible.

Why would you ever use HFS over HFS+ anyways?

[Gand]

I don't know what would be the problem. If you can point out what file or files within the bundle cause the error, we'll try to correct the situation if possible.

Why would you ever use HFS over HFS+ anyways?

User report that HFS is needed to use same USB thumb between Mac and win.
Also deleting two broken alias in framework folder don't solve the problem.
No message about wich files cause the error, just "one or more items can't be copied"
I've formatted my USB thumb as HFS+, Unix, HFS and DOS. On HFS and DOS copy don't work.

[chagrins]

You might want to use HFS over HFS+ on a small USB flash drive to save a few megabytes of space.