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I have a question about installers for mac.

I have chromium.dmg which contains Chromium web browser. I would like to create a wizard installer that installs chromium then allows the user to optionally automatically install some plugins, and launch chromium with an initial start page displayed.

To do this, I need a wizard-based installer.

I found IzPack which looks like it might work? Does anyone have any ideas how to do this? I get that wizard installers "aren't really a mac thing".

For an example of a wizard-based installer for mac, see SoapUI for Mac.

UPDATE:

IzPack so far has the installer part rocking pretty great. But the file is a Java archive Jar and many of my users don't have Java installed. Not ideal. I need to find a way to bundle it as a DMG even though its actually a java executable.

UPDATE 2:

I've got something very nice by using a combination of IzPack and https://github.com/Jorl17/jar2app

The IzPack builds a java installer but then you are stuck with an executable jar file. That's where jar2app comes in - you can convert the jar to an app file with a bundled JRE. Perfect.

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It's not perfect, but I've got something very nice by using a combination of IzPack and https://github.com/Jorl17/jar2app

The IzPack builds a java installer but then you are stuck with an executable jar file. That's where jar2app comes in - you can convert the jar to an app file with a bundled JRE.

Works for me, not perfect because the installer size gets kinda bloated. And also now you have a .app file which is actually an exploded archive. So you have to wrap that in a DMG. But that works.

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  • So it's a DMG wrapped in a JRE-based wizard contained in a DMG? This sounds very unnecessarily bloated. Have you considered using something like Packages or an alternative to make a .pkg installer? Those are the ones that tend to run a "wizard" to check if it can install, give you options of what to install and etc. There's also a set of built in tools for this with some good guides in this questions answers.
    – l3l_aze
    Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 18:49
  • Yeah that looks like it's the real way to do it. But wow, I wouldn't have any idea how to start with that. so many options, documentation is like a bible. I do like the IzPack's simplicity.
    – Nicholas DiPiazza
    Commented Sep 6, 2018 at 19:35

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