Common writable folders

[J. Landman Gay]

Richard Gaskin wrote:
> I have an app which will be for Mac and Win, and maybe Linux down the 
> road, in which I need to store some data in a folder which needs to be 
> writable by all users.
> 
> Both Mac and Win provide common folders for reading data:
> 
>   Mac  /HD/System Folder/Application Support
>   Win  C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data
> 
> ...but in my testing here only users with admin privileges can write to 
> those folders. :(
> 
> What is the OS-recommended place to store common data which can be 
> written by any user?
> 

I had exactly the same problem with a currently-shipping app. I'm 
writing app-specific data to the two folders you mention above. The only 
way we could work around it was to wrap our app in an OS-approved 
installer and have the installer set the permissions for our application 
support folder to allow access by everyone. The app support/app data 
folders don't need their permissions reset; only your own 
standalone-specific folder has to be set. For Mac OS X, we used Apple's 
package installer. On Windows, most any installer will do this for you.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com