Fritz Anderson
2011-05-15 17:25:15 UTC
So I'm writing a book about Xcode 4, and I've come to the property list editor for Info.plists. Two of the keys the editor has built in are:
APFiles (Installation files) - Array of dictionaries
APInstallerURL (Installation directory base file URL) - String
They're in the editor. They're in Apple's documentation for Info.plist keys, which even gives the keys, types, and descriptions of the dictionaries in APFiles. My experience with the Xcode build-settings editor is that when Apple wants to obsolete a key, it drops the plain-text equivalent and confronts you with the literal key. By that precedent, these keys appear to be in some sense alive.
The descriptions, however, are _extremely_ vague. They are little more than expansions of the key names. They don't say what the system does (or once did) with them. Google is of no help — it refers back to the Apple documents and to some guy asking in 2004 the same question I'm asking now. Searching the Apple developer forums turns up nothing.
I have some very vague memory of classic Mac OS having an autoinstall feature for the then-new application bundles, in which you could specify that on a drag-install, files would be pulled out of the bundle and into other locations. (Which sounds like a thundering security hole.) But that memory is so wispy that I may just be making it up.
They show up in the editors, so I have to remark on them, and I feel foolish that my only remark is that they baffle me. Can someone clue me in, please?
— F
APFiles (Installation files) - Array of dictionaries
APInstallerURL (Installation directory base file URL) - String
They're in the editor. They're in Apple's documentation for Info.plist keys, which even gives the keys, types, and descriptions of the dictionaries in APFiles. My experience with the Xcode build-settings editor is that when Apple wants to obsolete a key, it drops the plain-text equivalent and confronts you with the literal key. By that precedent, these keys appear to be in some sense alive.
The descriptions, however, are _extremely_ vague. They are little more than expansions of the key names. They don't say what the system does (or once did) with them. Google is of no help — it refers back to the Apple documents and to some guy asking in 2004 the same question I'm asking now. Searching the Apple developer forums turns up nothing.
I have some very vague memory of classic Mac OS having an autoinstall feature for the then-new application bundles, in which you could specify that on a drag-install, files would be pulled out of the bundle and into other locations. (Which sounds like a thundering security hole.) But that memory is so wispy that I may just be making it up.
They show up in the editors, so I have to remark on them, and I feel foolish that my only remark is that they baffle me. Can someone clue me in, please?
— F