Common writable folders

[Ken Ray]

On Jan 17, 2007, at 1:08 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> Richard Gaskin wrote:
>> J. Landman Gay wrote:
>>> 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.
>> Thanks for the input, Jacque.
>> But now I wonder:  Is there a way to do this from within a custom  
>> Rev-based installer?   How does one trigger the OS X  
>> authentication dialog?
>
> Well, that's the deal. I couldn't find a way to do that without  
> using Apple's installer. Most users wouldn't trust a home-made  
> dialog that asks for their admin password; they want to see the  
> "official" one. Ergo, package installer time.

One thing you can do (and I have done this before) is to make a mock  
duplicate of the authentication dialog and use shell() to do the  
stuff that requires authentication.

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com