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Redistributing tools that need to be built (e.g. imageMagick)

I have a mac osx application that relies on a number of tools (libusb, twain-sane interface, sane backends, and imageMagick) and I'm not sure how to redistribute these. I'm new to the mac world so please don't assume I know anything 🙂. I was lucky that these tools had their own package installers, but that doesn't help me for redistribution.


For imageMagick for example I was planning to include the source and then configure and make install it, but when I tried this myself I found that I didn't have a C compiler and had to download XCode and command line tools in order for it to work. I imagine anyone downloading my app would run into a similar problem, so I'm not sure how to proceed.


Am I meant to build these ahead of time and then on install move them to /usr/local/bin or /usr/local/lib where appropriate? Any help would be appricated, thanks.

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on May 23, 2012 10:51 AM

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3 replies

May 23, 2012 1:43 PM in response to BryanMcN

What is your distribution method? If you are installing yourself, you can (as much as the license will allow it), just install tools into the places where they could live. If you are planning on distributing via the Mac App Store, then those 3rd party tools need to be inside your application's bundle. It just so happens that the application bundle is the best place for them. Then, if someone wants to backup or uninstall your application, it doesn't have bits and pieces all over the system.


Another alternative is that you could wrap the 3rd party product into a private framework and include that inside your application bundle. Before executing any of those 3rd party tools, you may need to setup environment variable point to your application bundle frameworks directory.

Redistributing tools that need to be built (e.g. imageMagick)

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