A Shell Script to Delete Old Time Machine Backups and Free Disk Space

In another post I described the procedure to manually delete Time Machine snapshots and optionally shrink the disk image (in case a sparse bundle is being used) in order to free up disk space.

I have written a shell script, tm-cleanup.sh, to automate the backup deletion. The script accepts an optional argument to specify the maximum backup age in days: older backups are deleted (by default, backups older than 30 days are deleted).

The latest version of the script can be obtained by cloning its GitHub repository and, optionally, run its installation script to create symbolic links to it into /usr/local/bin:

$ sudo make install

fswatch 1.4.5 - Release Notes

fswatch 1.4.5 has been released.

New features and bug fixes added since v. 1.4.0 are:

• Add custom record formats.
• Localize fswatch and libfswatch using GNU gettext.
• Add Italian (it) localization.
• Add Spanish (es) localization.
• Fix Makefile.am because of broken link when DESTDIR installs are performed.
• Fix bug in fswatch-run wrapper script for ZSH which caused last argument not to be split when passed to xargs.
• Add batch marker feature to delimit the boundaries of a batch of events.
• Add Texinfo documentation.
• libfswatch API is now versioned.
• Improved Autoconf checks.
• The inotify monitor now waits for events and honours the latency settings.
• Automaticaly generate the ChangeLog using Git.
• Update autogen.sh to honour some commonly used environment variables.
• The inotify monitor now provides the same functionality provided by all the other monitors.
• Recursive directory monitoring is now implemented.
• Version and revision is now determined dynamically from Git by ancillary scripts invoked by the GNU Build System.
• fswatch does not compile on OS X < 10.9 because some required C++11 classes are not supported by the C++ runtime.
• fswatch does not compile on OS X < 10.9 because some required C++11 classes are not supported by the C++ runtime.
• The libfswatch library has been added with bindings for C and C++.
• fswatch let users specify the monitor to use by name.

OS X: Creating Packages from the Command Line - Tutorial and a Makefile - Part II

In the previous part of this tutorial we examined how pkgbuild and productbuild are used to build component packages and product archives. We also saw how hdiutil can be used to create a DMG image file to nicely package and distribute your product archive.

Although simple, the procedure is somewhat tedious: lot of typing, three different commands (four or more if we include building), lots of different paths and a many options. All of which, in a precise order, in order to satisfy the dependencies of each commands and to make sure the archives are updated whenever some component file changes.

Exactly what a Makefile is for!

A Makefile to build a Product Archive

All the steps described in the previous part of this tutorial can be automated with a proper Makefile. The Makefile we are going to create is basic, but can be used as a starting point to provide your project a set of ready to go and easy to use make targets to package it into a product archive and distribute it into a DMG file. This Makefile assumes that it is located into your XCode project root directory so that project binaries can be built and installed using

$ xcodebuild install

If this is not the case, just update the relevant action to run the build from the correct directory.

Let's start writing the Makefile in a top-down fashion. Let's add a default all target depending on anything else:

• $(DISTDIR) is the source folder for the DMG file, where the product archive will be stored.
• $(DEPSDIR) is an ancillary folder used to store directory. You can add more than one if component packages are stored in multiple folders, or remove it altogether if your product archive will be made up of a single component package.
• $(PRODUCT) is the product archive.
• $(DMGFILE) is the DMG image file creating from the source folder $(DISTDIR).

The resulting target is:

.PHONY : all
all : $(DISTDIR) $(DEPSDIR) $(PRODUCT) $(DMGFILE)

$(DISTDIR) and $(DEPSDIR) are created by the Makefile since we assume it is the Makefile that populates them:

$(DISTDIR) :
  mkdir $(DISTDIR)

$(DEPSDIR) :
  mkdir $(DEPSDIR)

$(PRODUCT), the product archive, depends on:

• $(BINARIES), the main component binaries.
• $(DEPENDENCY), a placeholder for the dependencies, a set of component packages to add to the product archive. If you have multiple dependencies, you will create multiple entries of this kind. You could omit this entry altogether, since productbuild would fail if a required component package is missing, but I think it is preferable to have make fail because of a missing target dependency.
• $(COMPONENT_PFILE), the component package property list file.
• $(COMPONENT), the component package.
• $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE), the distribution file.
• $(REQUIREMENTS), the requirements file.

$(PRODUCT) : $(BINARIES) $(REQUIREMENTS) \
             $(DEPENDENCY) $(COMPONENT_PFILE) \
             $(COMPONENT) $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE)
  productbuild --distribution $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) \
    --resources . \
    --package-path $(DEPSDIR) \
    --package-path $(DEPENDENCYDIR) \
    $(PRODUCT)

The $(BINARIES) are usually compiled and installed with xcodebuild:

$(BINARIES) :
  xcodebuild install

The component package property list file, $(COMPONENT_PFILE), must be created beforehand as seen in the previous post. Let's emit a meaningful error if it is missing referring to a target we will examine later on.

$(COMPONENT_PFILE) :
  @echo "Error: Missing component pfile."
  @echo "Create a component pfile with make compfiles."
  @exit 1

The main component package $(COMPONENT) depends on the binaries $(BINARIES) and the component property list file $(COMPONENT_PFILE) and it must be created with pkgbuild, as seen in the previous part of this tutorial:

$(COMPONENT) : $(BINARIES) $(COMPONENT_PFILE)
  pkgbuild --root $(BINARIES) \
  --component-plist $(COMPONENT_PFILE) \
  $(COMPONENT)

The distribution file $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE), as in the case of $(COMPONENT_PFILE), must be created beforehand. We will emit a meaningful error if it missing referring to a target we will examine later on:

$(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) :
  @echo "Error: Missing distribution file."
  @echo "Create a distribution file with make distfiles."
  @exit 1

Now the Makefile is functional except for one detail: who is going to create the two required property list files $(COMPONENT_PFILE) and $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE)? We have seen in the previous part of this tutorial that both pkgbuild and productbuild can be run in an analysis mode which analyses their input and creates an initial descriptor. We will add two targets to the Makefile that will provide the user a quick way to get initial versions of the required descriptors:

.PHONY : distfiles
distfiles : $(COMPONENT)
  productbuild --synthesize \
  --product $(REQUIREMENTS) \
  --package $(DEPENDENCY) \
  --package $(COMPONENT) \
  $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE).new
  @echo "Edit the $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE).new template to create a suitable $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) file."

.PHONY : compfiles
compfiles : $(BINARIES)
  pkgbuild --analyze \
  --root $(BINARIES) \
  $(COMPONENT_PFILE).new
  @echo "Edit the $(COMPONENT_PFILE).new template to create a suitable $(COMPONENT_PFILE) file."

Note that in the distfiles target the $(DEPENDENCY) variable is used as argument of the --package option. As explained earlier, you have to either add as many "dependency variables" as required by your product archive, or remove it altogether if the product archive only contains one component package, $(COMPONENT).

The files created by both the distfiles and the compfiles targets must be manually edited by the user and moved to their expected name by removing the .new extension.

Finally, let's add some targets to perform some housekeeping:

• clean, to remove the DMG file and all the packages.
• distclean, to remove the distribution files.
• compclean, to remove the component file.

.PHONY : clean
clean :
  -rm -f $(DMGFILE) $(PRODUCT) $(COMPONENT)
  -rm -rf $(BINARIES)

.PHONY : distclean
distclean :
  -rm -f $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE) $(DISTRIBUTION_FILE).new

.PHONY : compclean
compclean :
  -rm -f $(COMPONENT_PFILE) $(COMPONENT_PFILE).new

Populate the Variables

So far, we have used Makefile variables in our targets and actions in order to decouple the basic Makefile structure from the details of a specific project. Now, variables must be populated for the Makefile to work in every specific project.

This is the typical variable definition block I use at the top of this kind of Makefiles:

PROGRAM = Name
DISTDIR = ./dist
DEPSDIR = ./deps
BINARIES = /tmp/Name.dst
DMGFILE = $(PROGRAM).dmg
PRODUCT = $(DISTDIR)/$(PROGRAM).pkg
COMPONENT = $(DEPSDIR)/$(PROGRAM)Component.pkg
COMPONENT_PFILE = $(PROGRAM).plist
DISTRIBUTION_FILE = distribution.dist
REQUIREMENTS = requirements.plist

PROGRAM is a shared fragment which is typically set to the XCode project name. The DMG file name DMGFILE, the product archive name PRODUCT and the binary installation directory BINARIES are all initialised using this prefix. If want to customise any of these names or adjust any path to your needs, just modify accordingly the corresponding variable.

Use It

The default Makefile target, all, can be executed by simply invoking

$ make

If everything works correctly, you will find a DMG file image in your execution directory containing your product archive.

Conclusion

In this tutorial we have covered the basic tasks every OS X developer should master in order to build product packages for his own projects. Furthermore, the skeleton of a Makefile performing all the required operations has been provided. This is only the beginning of the work of creating an installer, since most of an installer properties and requirements must be manually set by the developer. However, the tedious part of building component packages and creating product packages can be automated in a relatively simple Makefile that I hope it will be useful to many of you.

OS X: Creating Packages from the Command Line - Tutorial and a Makefile - Part I

Over the years Apple has been removing useful tools from its flagship IDE, XCode, and PackageMaker was one of them. It didn't take me by surprise, though. But while on the one hand I understand that Apple would like most users to download software from the Mac App Store (for which plenty of functionality has been baked into XCode), on the other hand removing PackageMaker means leaving developers without a useful and simple graphical tool to build their packages. And even though you can still download it separately at the Mac Dev Center (search for a package called XCode Auxiliary Tools), PackageMaker is clearly an unsupported tool of the past, and you'd better rely on the current ones: pkgbuild and productbuild.

Both pkgbuild and productbuild are command-line tools and they provide developers all the functionality they need to (man page citation):

• Build OS X installer component packages.
• Build a product archive for the OS X installer.
• Build a product archive for the Mac App Store.

The only issue with them is they do not have a GUI and XCode does not publish their functionality through its UI.

In this blog post I will give a brief overview of how this tools can be invoked to build your own packages. You will be able to:

• Create your own product archives containing multiple component packages.
• Create a DMG disk image for your product archive.

In the next part of this tutorial we will see how we can write a Makefile to perform all the commands required to package your product and streamline your workflow, maybe executing it in a custom XCode target of yours.

Using pkgbuild

pkgbuild is the tool used to create component packages, the building blocks of product archives, the final products users install. Although component packages are packages themselves and you could distribute them and install them, building a product archive is in my opinion always preferable. Besides, component packages cannot be submitted to the Mac App Store.

pkgbuild main mode of operation is driven by a property list file which specifies the configuration of the component package to create. Developers do not need to write this file from scratch though: pkgbuild provides an analyse mode of operation that analyses the contents found in the specified root path and outputs a template component property list file that can be used as a starting point.

Assuming we want to build a component package for an OS X application, we first invoke pkgbuild in analyse mode on a release installation directory to create an initial component property list file:

$ pkgbuild --analyze \
  --root /tmp/Name.dst \
  NameComponent.plist

The root path for an application project is an XCode project property (Project/Build Settings/Deployment/Installation Build Products Location) defaulting to /tmp/$(PROJECT_NAME) that can be specified when performing the xcodebuild install target by setting the DSTROOT variable.

When run, pkgbuild will create a file called NameComponent.plist containing default configuration values such as the following (output may vary):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
  <dict>
    <key>BundleHasStrictIdentifier</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BundleIsRelocatable</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BundleIsVersionChecked</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BundleOverwriteAction</key>
    <string>upgrade</string>
    <key>RootRelativeBundlePath</key>
    <string>Applications/Name.app</string>
  </dict>
</array>
</plist>

Tweak your component property file according to your needs (man pkgbuild for detailed information about the available configuration property) and when the configuration is ready pkgbuild can be run in its main mode to create the component package (split lines for better readability):

$ pkgbuild --root /tmp/Name.dst \
  --component-plist NameComponent.plist \
  NameComponent.pkg

Here, we use NameComponent.pkg as the name of the component package to distinguish from the name of the product archive package.

Sign Packages with pkgbuild

pkgbuild lets you sign packages using an "identity" (a certificate and the corresponding private key) that must be installed into one of your keychains. To sign a component package, invoke pkgbuild with the --sign identityName option where identityName is the common name (CN) of the desired certificate.

If you are creating a signed product, for example if you want to submit it to the Mac App Store, signing all its component packages is not required: you should only sign the product archive using productbuild.

Using productbuild

Let's now suppose you have created two component packages for your product:

• NameComponent.pkg, created in the previous section.
• MyFramework.pkg, a dependency of NameComponent.pkg (created as seen in the previous section).

productbuild is the tool used to create product archives, that is: packages to be installed by users or to be submitted to the Mac App Store. A product archive is made up of one or more component packages and in this tutorial we will create one containing the two aforementioned components.

Similarly to pkgbuild, productbuild runs in multiple modes (currently the available modes are 5, see the man page for detailed information), two of them being:

• Analysis mode, to create an initial distribution file.
• Create a product archive from a distribution file.

A distribution file is to the product archive what the component property list is for the component package: it includes all the configuration of the product archive, including (see the man page for detailed information):

• A product license.
• A product README file.
• The list of component packages.
• Constraints (such as minimum OS version).

To create the initial distribution file for our product archive, we run productbuild in analysis mode specifying the list of component packages to include. In this case we specify the --synthesize option to run productbuild in analysis mode, two component packages with multiple --package options, a requirement file (described in the next section) and the name of the resulting distribution file distribution.plist (split lines for better readability):

$ productbuild --synthesize \
  --product requirements.plist \
  --package MyFrameworkComponent.pkg \
  --package NameComponent.pkg \
  distribution.plist

Once productbuild creates the initial distribution file, you can manually modify it to satisfy your needs.

Adding a License

If you want to add a license to your product archive, prepare a license file in one of the supported formats (including rtf, html and plain txt) and add its reference to the distribution file using a <license/> element to the distribution file root element <installer-gui-script/>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<installer-gui-script minSpecVersion="2">
  <title>Name</title>
  ...
  <license file="LICENSE.html"/>
  ...
</installer-gui-script>

Adding a README

A README file can be added using a procedure similar to what we have used to add a license file, but in this case the name of the element is <readme/>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<installer-gui-script minSpecVersion="2">
  <title>Name</title>
  ...
  <license file="LICENSE.html"/>
  <readme file="README.html"/>
  ...
</installer-gui-script>

Creating a Requirements File

Requirements can be specified in a requirement property list file (see man page for detailed information). A requirement property list file is a property list whose element is a dictionary in which may constraints can be expressed using a series of keys, including (but not limited to):

• os: Minimum allowable OS version.
• arch: Supported architectures.
• ram: Minimum required RAM.

To specify a dependency on OS X 10.9, we can create an empty property list file whose first child is a dictionary in which we add an os key with the constraint we need:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>os</key>
  <array>
    <string>10.9</string>
  </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Creating the Product Archive

Once the distribution file is ready, productbuild can be run to finally create the product archive. In this case we have to specify the distribution file with the --distribution option, the resource path where resource files are found (such as license and README, even if they are in the current working directory) the package path where component packages can be found using the --package-path options (in case they are not in the current working directory) and the name of the product package:

$ productbuild \
  --distribution distribution.plist
  --resources .
  --package-path path/to/MyFrameworkComponent.pkg
  --package-path path/to/NameComponent.pkg
  Name.pkg

Signing the Product Archive

As explained in the case of pkgbuild, productbuild lets you sign the product archive using the identity (a certificate common name) specified with the --sign option. The specified certificate must be available in an accessible keychain, otherwise the path of a specific keychain must be specified using the --keychain option.

A product archive can even be signed after it has been created using the productsign command (see the man page for further information).

Creating a DMG Disk Image

OS X installers are often distributed in a DMG disk image file. If you want to create a DMG file containing your product archive (and optionally other files) you have to:

• Put all the files your want to include in a folder (the source folder in hdiutil jargon).
• Use the hdiutil command-line utility to create a DMG disk image from the source folder.

Assuming we have created the ./dist source folder where we have copied the Name.pkg product archive, we can use the following command to create a Name.dmg DMG file (split lines for better readability) named My Product:

$ hdiutil create \
  -volname "My Product" \
  -srcfolder ./dist \
  -ov \
  Name.dmg

The optional -ov option is used to overwrite an existing DMG file.

A Makefile to Put It All Together

In the next part of this tutorial we will examine an example Makefile that can be used as a starting point to perform all the operations described in this post.