[Wocky] MIT Adium 0.86 (Beta 1) installer available for testing

[Ken Raeburn]

> <https://web.mit.edu/swrt/releases/adium/installer/>

If I understand it right, your .htaccess.mit file in that directory  
limits access to people in two groups, swr-core and wocky.  Problem  
is, the wocky group in Moira and AFS doesn't contain any users, it  
just contains the one string wocky at mailman.mit.edu.  This may explain  
why I wasn't able to download it.  (Or, it may be related to the  
problems I've been having just recently with email access from my  
laptop too, if it's something certificate-related.)  Fortunately I  
was able to copy it out of AFS.

So, now I've got /Applications/MIT containing MIT Netscape 7.02, and / 
Applications/MIT Adium 0.86.  The Netscape install is kind of old, so  
maybe things have changed, but does MIT (SWRT) have a consistent  
policy on what level to install MIT Mac applications at?

The installer asked for my Kerberos id, which I gave it.  When I  
started Adium, I then had two raeburn at mit.edu accounts with basically  
the same configuration data.  (I've been using Adium for a while, and  
already had configured an mit.edu account.)  The installer should've  
checked for that, and either told me nothing needed to be done, or  
checked that the data was correct and updated (offered to update?) if  
it was not.

So I deleted one of them, the one listed first, which I assume was  
the old one.

Signing on to the account, I'm asked for my password, so I assume  
this version doesn't have the Gaim patches to use Kerberos  
authentication.  Is there anything interesting to this version  
besides having MIT's installer and prefs installer on top of the  
standard Adium distribution?

I took a look at the prefs installer.  (Why is it buried in yet  
another subdirectory, one which contains only the one program with  
the same name as the directory?)  It says it will create an Adium  
account for use at MIT; fine.  It also says ``Items will be installed  
on the disk "Mac OS X"'' -- what items?  The account data should be  
stored wherever the account data is stored under my home directory,  
regardless of what disk that happens to be on.  (If my home directory  
is not on the boot partition, will this report even be correct?)   
After I click "skip", the message says I can run "the Adium 0.86  
Prefs Installer in your Applications -> MIT Adium 0.86 folder".   
Except, that's not the name of the program ("MIT Adium 0.86 Prefs  
Installer"), and it's buried in a sub-folder.  Is there a right-arrow  
glyph that might be used instead of the dash greater-than construct?   
(The Character Palette shows Unicode code points for Rightwards  
Arrow →, Rightwards Double Arrow ⇒, Rightwards White Arrow ⇨,  
and Black Rightwards Arrow ➡, for example, in the Arrows and  
Dingbats tables, but I don't know if these characters are always  
available; some other code points listed in the Character Palette  
aren't displayed for me.)

The downside for me, semi-paranoid person that I am, is that I don't  
appear to have the option of simply copying in one program or folder  
without running an installer program, as I get with the standard  
Adium package.  Sometimes it's nice to know that (1) nothing's been  
installed outside that folder, so it's easy to throw it all away at  
once, and (2) it's not configuring any path-dependent stuff during  
installation, so renaming it or moving it to another folder is okay.   
The former may not be a problem if the installer program deigns to  
leave me a log file to look at, which this one appears to, though  
it's hard to tell that before running it if you don't already know,  
and impossible to decide whether to install a program based on  
whether it installs stuff in shared system folders, replaces system  
libraries, all that fun stuff you find on Windows.  I know I can move  
Adium.app around without breaking things, but I'm less sure about the  
MIT Prefs Installer.

Ken