I am unhappy with the AIR installer. I want everything pre-installed in the LuxPose folder.

I have found through experimentation that when you "install" the GUI using the .air file, it produces a binary executable that is identical regardless of which application it is. The application is actually in a .swf file and the .exe runs that. The .exe knows which to run from an xml file also deposited in the application folder.

I have found that I can update the application just by replacing the .swf file. There is no need to completely re-install.

Further, I have found that there are a few other files deposited in the app folder that are not needed, and that I can delete those.

Further, I have found that I can copy the remaining few files and subfolders and put them anywhere I want and the application runs just fine.

So what I'd like to do is to avoid the .air file and instead just put already prepared files in the LuxPose folder.

I have no problem doing this for Windows, since that's what I'm on, so I can assemble the package. But for Mac or Linux, I need the assistance of somebody who has already installed the LuxPose UI on those systems.

The AIR installer asks you where to put the application, and the default it c:Program FilesLuxPose. In there the files I things I needed for Windows are:

LuxPose.exe - the executable
LuxPose.swf - the actual Flex application
META-INF - a folder with metadata about the application - necessary for it to run
META-INF/AIR -
META-INF/AIR/application.xml
META-INF/AIR/publisherid

This is what I will use to create the pre-assembled LuxPose GUI for Windows. I will put this stuff in the package.

I believe that a Linux package would be similar, with a different binary for the .exe file. But I suspect the Mac package is a different beast.

Now I know that Mac apps are not really files, but magical folders of some kind. I'm assuming that instead of LuxPose.exe, there is something else, and that the other files are the same.

I don't know how to go about assembling a pre-assembled Mac or Linux application from what is deposted after you run the .air installer. If somebody wants to have a go at figuring that out, that would be great. I'm worried that I can't make this work on Mac, though, because I suspect that the application itself uses the data fork/resource fork mechanism that Macs have, and that I won't be able to distribute that stuff properly in a zip file built from my Windows machine.

In the meantime, I think what I'll do is include the AIR file for non-Windows users and they'll just have to run it and install the actual application back into the LuxPose folder. I worry, though, that this users will ignore instructions and deposit the app in the wrong folder. I really want to find a way to do this automatically.

Once I have the GUI pre-packaged in the LuxPose folder tree, we will no longer have to configure paths for the GUI to find the data and for the Python to find the GUI. Everything will just be relative paths and require no info from the user.

The last little things I a need to learn is:

• In Python, find out if I'm on Windows, Linux, or Mac. I will use that info to decide what the name of the GUI application actually is. It is LuxPose.exe only on Windows.
• How to launch the application in those other environments. I'm assuming that spawnl will work. I'm using spawnl in Windows just fine. But the Python docs on spawnl say "Availability: Unix, Windows". This worries me, as it implies it is not available on Mac OSX. Is that just a typo? Does spawnl work in Linux and Mac?

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