cocoaforge

I tried installing growlmail, it doesn't do what I want, and now I want to remove it. However, the uninstallation script that comes with growl is foobared and keeps looking for "GrowlHelperApp.app", which doesn't exist.

Here's the story. I want Gmail notifier functionality for Mail.app. I.e., I want two things: 1) a transient message box in the upper right corner of the screen that displays new messages for a few seconds when they arrive, and 2) a persistent icon in menu bar showing how many unread messages I have in my inbox. It seemed like growlmail provided both of these, so I downloaded and tried to install it.

Problem 1: there is nothing on the Growl website that I could find about OS compatibility. I'm using 10.5 and half the apps in the world seem to be useless in 10.5. Better documentation please, Growl?
Problem 2: according to the extremely terse install instructions, I just had to run the GrowlMail installer in the extras folder. I ran said mkpg file. The preference pane did indeed appear in my Mail.app preferences, as expected, but no notifications resulted. No additional menu icons, no message popups, nothing. Maybe I have to install the larger Growl.mpkg, I think to myself. But really, I shouldn't have to be asking myself these kinds of questions. Documentation...
Problem 3: I install the growl package. I now have a paw in my menu bar. New messages pop little notifications windows, albeit with a very long latency. However, the paw icon in the menu bar doesn't show any evidence of having received new mail. Hence, there is no persistent menu icon. After fiddling with the growl prefences for a few minutes, I gave up. A bit of googling seems to indicate that GrowlMail doesn't work properly in 10.5. Is this the case? If so, I would have appreciated being notified of this on the GrowlMail website before going to all this hassle.
Problem 4: I want to remove GrowlMail. Since I have nothing with which to uninstall just that component, I try running the "Uninstall Growl" script included with the Growl download. Whenever I run this script, I get a message box asking me "Where is GrowlHelperApp.app?". Unfortunately, there is no option for "How the eff should I know?" More googling seems to indicate that it's in an obscure preferences directory. I couldn't find it. I popped a terminal window and did 'find . -name "*rowl*"', but nothing came up.
Problem 5: If I click "cancel" in the dialog that asks about GrowlHelperApp.app, I get another dialog asking for GrowlMenuSomething.app, or some such. If I cancel out of both of these, the uninstaller appears to complete. Growl is no longer listed in my system preferences. However, GrowlMail is still listed in my Mail.app preferences. Nice.
Problem 6: Googling "GrowlHelperApp.app" indicates two things. First, I am not the only person frustrated by this issue. Second, a post on another forum seems to indicate that Growl has to be running in order for GrowlHelperApp.app to exist. I am credulous, but I have no other options, so I reinstalled Growl and tried uninstalling again. Exact same results.

Growl, if you're listening, please please please improve your documentation first and foremost. Maybe you already have great documentation, I don't know, but I didn't see it when I tried to install GrowlMail. If you don't make information painfully and stupidly obvious, the average user won't find it during the 3.7 seconds they spend looking at the pretty screenshots your page before they download your app. Secondly, nothing is worse than an app that doesn't die. Applications from the internet that don't uninstall completely and leave pieces of themselves lying around in obscure locations? How Windows is that?

Please help me get GrowlMail off my computer and I promise I'll leave you alone and stop complaining.
Thanks,
Adrian

Are you trying to remove Growlmail or Growl? I ask because you mention using the uninstaller and it has a known issue with growlhelperapp. That uninstaller is for Growl, not GrowlMail.

I'm trying to remove GrowlMail. If I had my druthers, I'd never had installed Growl on my computer to begin with. All of this waste of time is because I want GrowlMail off my computer. I tried the Growl uninstaller for two reasons: 1) I tried installing Growl because GrowlMail on its own didn't seem to be doing anything and 2) GrowlMail doesn't seem to have any uninstaller that I can find.

Side note, what did you want Growlmail to do that it did not do?


Go into /Library/Mail/Bundles and ~/Library/Mail/Bundles and look to see where GrowlMail is at. Quit Mail, remove GrowlMail, and you are done. That's the standard, OS X way to remove a mail bundle.

adriand wrote:I want two things: 1) a transient message box in the upper right corner of the screen that displays new messages for a few seconds when they arrive, and 2) a persistent icon in menu bar showing how many unread messages I have in my inbox. It seemed like growlmail provided both of these, so I downloaded and tried to install it.

No, Growl and GrowlMail (together) only provide the first one. GrowlMail does not have a status item, and Growl doesn't let applications (which includes GrowlMail) access its status item.

Problem 1: there is nothing on the Growl website that I could find about OS compatibility. I'm using 10.5 and half the apps in the world seem to be useless in 10.5. Better documentation please, Growl?

The front page of the Growl website says “Growl requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher”. This goes for all the extras, too, although we should probably say that somewhere.

As for half the apps in the world, they're not our problem.

Problem 2: according to the extremely terse install instructions, I just had to run the GrowlMail installer in the extras folder. I ran said mkpg file. The preference pane did indeed appear in my Mail.app preferences, as expected, but no notifications resulted.

Yeah. The Extras all require Growl.

However, the paw icon in the menu bar doesn't show any evidence of having received new mail.

Correct. That's part of Growl, not GrowlMail (hence why the option to turn it on and off is in Growl's preference pane, not GrowlMail's), and as I mentioned above, Growl doesn't let applications access it.

A bit of googling seems to indicate that GrowlMail doesn't work properly in 10.5. Is this the case?

No. This was true before 1.1.3, but we fixed all the Leopard-compatibility problems in that version.

If so, I would have appreciated being notified of this on the GrowlMail website before going to all this hassle.

We did have a notice of the compatibility problems on the website. Then we fixed them.

Problem 4: I want to remove GrowlMail. Since I have nothing with which to uninstall just that component, I try running the "Uninstall Growl" script included with the Growl download. Whenever I run this script, I get a message box asking me "Where is GrowlHelperApp.app?". Unfortunately, there is no option for "How the eff should I know?"

Yeah, the uninstaller sucks. We need to fix it—preferably sooner, rather than later.

More googling seems to indicate that it's in an obscure preferences directory. I couldn't find it.

It's in /Library/PreferencePanes. That's starting from the root level of your hard disk, of course.

I popped a terminal window and did 'find . -name "*rowl*"', but nothing came up.

That's because the Growl preference pane is in /Library/PreferencePanes, not ~/Library/PreferencePanes.

… If I cancel out of both of these, the uninstaller appears to complete. Growl is no longer listed in my system preferences. However, GrowlMail is still listed in my Mail.app preferences. Nice.

Yeah, the Growl uninstaller doesn't cover extras. When we fix the uninstaller to not suck, we'll probably take care of that, too.

Problem 6: Googling "GrowlHelperApp.app" indicates two things. First, I am not the only person frustrated by this issue.

Indeed you're not.

Second, a post on another forum seems to indicate that Growl has to be running in order for GrowlHelperApp.app to exist.

Not quite true. It always exists (as long as you have Growl installed); it resides inside the prefpane. Having it running just makes it easier for AppleScript to find it. Otherwise, AppleScript has a hard time finding it, because the helper app isn't in one of the usual locations for applications (instead, it's inside the prefpane).

Secondly, nothing is worse than an app that doesn't die. Applications from the internet that don't uninstall completely and leave pieces of themselves lying around in obscure locations? How Windows is that?

/Library/PreferencePanes is hardly obscure. Obscure would be something like /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources. The PreferencePanes folder (any one of them) is a perfectly reasonable place to put a preference pane.

The same goes for Mail bundles and Library/Mail/Bundles.

adriand wrote:I want two things: 1) a transient message box in the upper right corner of the screen that displays new messages for a few seconds when they arrive, and 2) a persistent icon in menu bar showing how many unread messages I have in my inbox.

BTW, there's an app called Google+Growl that will do this and a few other things. It might even put the unread count in your menu bar, though I don't know for sure: I know it has a status item, but I don't use the app, myself.

It works separately from Mail, so you don't need that running, but you do need Growl running (as implied by the name).

Thanks for getting back to me boredzo. I appreciate your feedback, although my main concern remains unresolved: how do I remove GrowlMail? If the uninstaller doesn't remove the extras, how do I take it out by hand? I don't see anything in the global or user level Library/Mail directories that I can remove to kill the extra preference pane in Mail.

Does Google+Growl work for Mail? It seems like from the website that it's just a tool for customizing the Gmail notifier windows. I want basically Gmail-notifier-like functionality for Mail, I'm not actually using Gmail notifier on this computer.

As for finding "GrowlHelperApp.app", I did run the find from the / directory, although I should have specified this in my post. I think the reason that the search failed was because the uninstall script, which gives no confirmation of success or failure, seems to delete the Growl preference pane directory whether these two helper apps are found or not. I probably searched for these apps after clicking "cancel" and assuming that the uninstaller failed.

I would argue that obscurity is relative. The PreferencePanes directory is the correct place to put a preference pane, for sure. I agree with you there. I would say that it seems obscure to the ordinary user who does not know the internals of Mac OS X and is trying to hunt down something they should never have to think about. Until this issue with Growl, I didn't know (nor any need to know) that additional preference panes that appear in the System Preferences were stored in /Library/PreferencePanes.

Adrian

adriand wrote:… how do I remove GrowlMail?

Take it out of the Bundles folder and put it in the Trash. Quit Mail, if it's running. Finally, empty the Trash.

Does Google+Growl work for Mail?

No; it's completely separate from Mail. It integrates with the Google Notifier (as opposed to GrowlMail, which integrates with Mail).

As for finding "GrowlHelperApp.app", I did run the find from the / directory, although I should have specified this in my post. I think the reason that the search failed was because the uninstall script, which gives no confirmation of success or failure, seems to delete the Growl preference pane directory whether these two helper apps are found or not. I probably searched for these apps after clicking "cancel" and assuming that the uninstaller failed.

That makes sense.

I would say that it seems obscure to the ordinary user who does not know the internals of Mac OS X and is trying to hunt down something they should never have to think about.

The ordinary user should be able to use the uninstaller; the fact that it's defective is the real problem.

Until this issue with Growl, I didn't know (nor any need to know) that additional preference panes that appear in the System Preferences were stored in /Library/PreferencePanes.

FYI, another way to delete prefpanes is in System Preferences itself. If you right-click on a third-party prefpane, it presents a menu with one menu item: “Remove ‘<name>’ Preference Pane”.

boredzo wrote:

adriand wrote:Until this issue with Growl, I didn't know (nor any need to know) that additional preference panes that appear in the System Preferences were stored in /Library/PreferencePanes.

FYI, another way to delete prefpanes is in System Preferences itself. If you right-click on a third-party prefpane, it presents a menu with one menu item: “Remove ‘<name>’ Preference Pane”.

That's the method that's in the video on the uninstalling Growl web page I think. Maybe we should add a link within the uninstaller somewhere to that page in case the uninstaller doesn't work.

The_Tick wrote:… Maybe we should add a link within the uninstaller …

There's no “within the uninstaller”. It's an AppleScript.

And when we rewrite the uninstaller in pure Cocoa, we shouldn't add the link there either. We should make it just work.

boredzo wrote:

The_Tick wrote:… Maybe we should add a link within the uninstaller …

There's no “within the uninstaller”. It's an AppleScript.

And when we rewrite the uninstaller in pure Cocoa, we shouldn't add the link there either. We should make it just work.

I agree (about just fixing it), and I was referring to the rewrite when I wrote that, I didn't make that clear though.

I think we should include the link somewhere, in case the uninstaller fails, as a fall back. We can't ship a quicktime video showing how to manually uninstall obviously, but I think a link would be better as a just in case.

As to documentation, and maybe we should split this into a new thread, maybe on the dev mailing list, but I'm wondering if shipping documentation with Growl would be better than keeping it on the website. For years it hasn't really been maintained very well, and it all needs to be redone anyhow, now would be a good time to decide that.