Category Archives: Uncategorized

Java 7: How not to use launchd for your app

March 15, 2013

The Oracle Java 7 package contains launchd items to support its Sparkle-based background update check app that I complained about previously. In this post we’ll go through its logic exhaustively and use it as an example of how to not deploy a LaunchAgent, and issues when trying clever things in LaunchDaemon scripts. For some, there [...]

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Managing Xcode CLI tools

March 15, 2013

In a previous post on deploying Xcode components, I showed how the iOS Simulators are defined in a metadata file used by Apple, called dvtdownloadableindex, which is a binary plist containing information about all the “Components” available in the Downloads preference area. What’s useful about this file is that it describes in a human-readable way [...]

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Everything you’ll wish you didn’t know about disabling Java 7 updates

February 24, 2013

Oracle’s Java 7 JRE for OS X was first officially released in October 2012. As expected, there have been issues deploying and testing it, amidst confusion about Apple’s Java 6 updates and it disabling symlinks to the web plugin, the pre-emptive disabling of Java with XProtect, and more. And of course, the first thing administrators [...]

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