276571 - Thunderbird disk image should use .dmg internal zlib-compression, not .dmg.gz

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Build Config, defect)

Description

[Ali Ebrahim]

Thunderbird version of bug 268074 (bits and pieces of comment 0 stolen from there).

Thunderbird on Mac OS X uses a .dmg.gz format for distribution. This is a
regular non-compressed .dmg compressed using gzip. Instead, we should be using
the .dmg format's zlib-compression feature. According to this man page:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/hdiutil.1.html

compressed .dmg archives have been supported since MacOS X 10.1. Since we
require 10.1 or newer in order to run Thunderbird, theoretically there should be
no problem with regards to backwards compatibility. .dmg files are also the
standard method of software distribution on Mac, so we also adhere to platform
standards, and avoid the unlikely problem case where a user may not have Stuffit
Expander installed to open the .gz.

This has to be two steps process any way:

1. Create disk image and copy Thunderbird there
2. Apply compression, what is acomplished with command:

hdiutil convert tmp-thunderbird-1.0.en-US.mac.dmg \
   -format UDZO -o thunderbird-1.0.en-US.mac.dmg \
   -imagekey zlib-level=9

Key things are: "-format UDZO" set disk image format to compressed one;
"-imagekey zlib-level=9" set maximum compression level for gzip/zlib.

man hdiutil for more information.

This has also been discussed here at some length by various commenters:
http://blog.ebrahim.org/archives/2004/12/30/mac_firefox_install_problems.php

Comment 1

[Ali Ebrahim]

See bug 169602 comment 14 for more reasons why we should do this. Space savings
of dmg.gz over internally zlib-compressed dmg are negligible, users are
presented with a more familiar download process with dmg, and we remove an
unecessary dependency on Stuffit Expander.

Comment 2

[Ali Ebrahim]

Bug 242845 will probably fix this for Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[DStile]

*** Bug 272530 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Scott MacGregor]

Chase, can we mark this bug fixed for Mac OS X? The trunk has been converted to
work this way now right?

Comment 5

[Chase Phillips]

Yeah, it can be closed.  The only advantage to leaving it open is that it still
hasn't landed on the 1.0.1 branch which just needs me stealing some cycles from
something else to get it in place.

Not sure if you want it on the 1.0 branch.  Do you?

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

no we don't have any releases coming from the 1.0 branch for the mac anymore so
there's no need to do that.

Marking as fixed. Thanks Chase. 

Comment 7

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

vrfy'd fixed with recent mac tbird trunk builds.