Compiled as a Universal Binary for full speed on Intel-based Macs
Lets you install individual items or folders from .pkg packages, either to their default install locations or to a custom
location you specify
Allows you to install to a disk other than the boot disk if you prefer
Works with the new Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” package format as well as packages from older Mac OS X versions ranging
from Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” to the Mac OS X Public Beta
Supports .pkg packages, .mpkg metapackages, .zip archives, .bom file listings, .dmg disk images, and .pax, .pax.gz, .tar,
.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .cpio, .cpio.gz, .cpio.bz2, and .xar archives
Support for .zip archives with extensive format support - should correctly extract Mac and UNIX metadata from Apple’s Zip
format as well as MacZip, SmartZip, ZipIt, and InfoZip archives. In order to achieve support for all these formats as well as the
“Open URL” feature, Pacifist has a new Zip parser written completely from scratch rather than using existing
functionality such as the ‘zip’ command-line tool.
A new “Open URL” feature makes it possible to remotely load archives over the network. For .zip, .xar, .dmg, and
Leopard .pkg packages, this feature only downloads the portion of the file which is necessary to read it, causing files to open
much more quickly than it would take to download the whole archive (.zip files, in particular, are very fast - try it!).
All files in a package can be viewed right in Pacifist using of a new “View Files” feature. The
“View Files” feature includes support for various text and image file types, as well as support for RTF, RTFD,
HTML, MS Word, and property list files. Pacifist also includes a new hexadecimal file viewer for viewing binary files and
unknown file types.
Includes the ability to verify existing intallations, comparing the files on your hard disk with the files listed in the
package, and notifying you of missing files as well as files that have different permissions or checksums than those listed
in the package*
Follows all symlinks and aliases properly, without overwriting them
Doesn’t alter the properties of existing folders, including their permissions
Correctly gives the sizes of a package, both compressed and uncompressed
Displays the following information about files in packages: path, size, kind, owner, group, permissions, modification date,
checksum
Allows the user to selectively choose whether or not to display certain types of metadata
Inspector window gives a more detailed look at files in a package
Displays total size of currently selected files, letting you know exactly how much space your installation will take on your
hard disk. Dynamically updates this size as the selection changes.
Includes the ability to view a package’s resources, such as the Read Me file, the install scripts, etc.
Correctly sets all file owner and permission settings
Allows the user to override a package’s authentication requirement
Automatically converts AppleDouble files into resource forks and metadata when installing on HFS+ disks (leaves the files alone
if installing on UFS)
Automatically updates prebinding information after installation to optimize system performance (disabled by default on Mac OS X
10.4 and higher)
Allows the user to create receipts for .pkg packages
It is possible to cancel the extraction at any stage of the installation
Multiple-document interface
Multi-threaded
Has a working search feature
Supports drag and drop
Supports contextual menus
Commonly used functions available via toolbar
Auto filename completion
Works with compressed or uncompressed packages
By default, prompts before replacing any files
Uses the Security Framework if the files will need to be installed as root
If you install a folder and the folder already exists, Pacifist installs the folder’s contents and doesn’t overwrite
the parent folder. The exception is application bundles, which by default will ask you what to do.
Works around a bug in pax so that hard links extract from packages correctly instead of generating “File not found”
errors
Spiffy icons by Adam Betts
Czech localization by Lukáš Vajda
Dutch localization by Koen van Hees
French localization by Ronald Leroux
German localization by Sebastian Krauß, Martin Bestmann, Goetz Goerisch, and Norbert Rittel
Italian localization by Gabriele Callari
Japanese localization by Takehiko Hatatani
Known Issues and Missing Features
No support for running pre-install, post-install, pre-upgrade, or post-upgrade scripts
No support for relocatable installs
No uninstall (this would be easy to do, but I’m nervous about making my program delete files on people’s hard drives
- it would not be good if someone tried to uninstall an OS update package)
Changes in version 2.6.3
Worked around an oversight in Snow Leopard’s Finder that caused drag-and-drop to the Finder not to work properly
Changes in version 2.6.2
Fixed a bug inadvertently added in 2.6.1 that caused hangs at the "Verifying Files" stage
Changes in version 2.6.1
Fixed a bug which could cause the Kernel Extension Report feature not to work properly under Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”
Changes in version 2.6
Compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”
Added a QuickLook plug-in
Added Simplified Chinese localization by Yunxuan He
Added support for PKZIP, WinZip, and Info-Zip self-extracting .zip archives
Added support for Zip64 archives
Added support for bzip2-compressed .zip archives
While extracting, the Verification phase is much faster
The Verification phase is now optional and can be disabled in the preferences
fixed a bug that caused .xar, .pkg, and .zip files on some HTTP servers not to load properly
Fixed a crashing bug that could occur while viewing packages with no resources
Fixed a bug that caused some Leopard flat packages not to be read properly
Fixed a bug that could cause the Logic Studio 9 discs to fail to load
Fixed a few bugs that could cause spurious errors when extracting files from pre-Leopard packages
Fixed a bug that could cause the resource forks not to be written properly for some files in pre-Leopard packages
Fixed a bug that could cause symlinks to be extracted with an incorrect path content or omitted entirely
Fixed a crashing bug that could occur while opening .zip files
Fixed a bug that could cause the window for the image view to appear at an incorrect size
Made some corrections to the localizations
Miscellaneous bug fixes
Changes in version 2.5.2
Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist to crash when running in unregistered mode
Added the ability for Pacifist to accept URLs from other applications
Added support for the Xcode 2.5 install disc to the "Open Apple Install Discs" button
Fixed a bug that caused loading URLs containing percent escapes not to work correctly
Pacifist should now work on Panther even if the BSD subsystem is not present
Fixed a bug that could cause package scripts not to be visible in some Leopard flat packages
Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist to hang at launch time under certain circumstances
Changes in version 2.5.1
Fixed a bug that prevented Pacifist from launching on Mac OS X 10.3.x
Changes in version 2.5
Support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and its new package format
Support for .xar archives
Support for .zip archives with extensive format support - should correctly extract Mac and UNIX metadata from Apple’s Zip
format as well as MacZip, SmartZip, ZipIt, and InfoZip archives. In order to achieve support for all these formats as well as the
“Open URL” feature, Pacifist has a new Zip parser written completely from scratch rather than using existing
functionality such as the ‘zip’ command-line tool.
A new “Open URL” feature makes it possible to remotely load archives over the network. For .zip, .xar, .dmg, and
Leopard .pkg packages, this feature only downloads the portion of the file which is necessary to read it, causing files to open
much more quickly than it would take to download the whole archive (.zip files, in particular, are very fast - try it!).
All files in a package can now be viewed right in Pacifist using of a new “View Files” feature. The
“View Files” feature includes support for various text and image file types, as well as support for RTF, RTFD,
HTML, MS Word, and property list files. Pacifist 2.5 also adds a new hexadecimal file viewer for viewing binary files and
unknown file types.
Loading a disk image containing a package will now cause the package to be loaded and its contents to be displayed.
Underscore files (._example) are no longer displayed as separate files, but are now considered an attribute of the original file.
If a file has an underscore file or a resource fork associated with it, a badge is added to its icon to indicate this.
Package resources can now be extracted, just like package contents.
The Verify feature now ignores the permissions of symbolic links.
The Verify feature now has a “Zero-Length Files” check to detect files that may have been emptied by the recent
prebinding bug in OS X
The search feature now employs a proper search field, as well as Command-G and Command-Shift-G to iterate through the search results.
Files that are being viewed via the “View Files” feature can now be searched.
Pacifist now includes an option to create BOM files.
Removed some outdated options from the preferences.
Unfortunately, the Czech localization has been removed from this version. Hopefully, it will be able to be re-added at some
point in the future.
Numerous bug fixes.
Changes in version 2.0.1
New Czech localization by Lukáš Vajda
Interface clarification: if you select a folder or a package that contains other files and folders, the contained files will now
get highlighted light gray to indicate that they will get extracted/installed as well
Replaced the generic error message on failure to open a file with something more specific
Fixed a bug in which using the “Install” feature on certain packages could make Pacifist crash
Fixed a bug which could cause some packages to install in the wrong place under certain conditions
Fixed various localization issues
Changes in version 2.0
Full support for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”
Recompiled as a Universal Binary to run natively on Intel-based Macs
Fixed a bug that caused registration sometimes not to work on Intel-based Macs.
Fixed a bug which caused large metapackages to sometimes load a few extra packages after you cancel it
Fixed a bug which caused some packages to erroneously give “BOM file not found” errors
Added support for reading raw BOM files
Added support for reading DMG files
Added support for reading .pax, .tar, .tar.gz, and .tgz files
Added the ability to view a package’s resources (i.e. the Read Me file, the install scripts, etc.)
Fixed a few memory leaks
Made it possible to close the splash screen window
Fixed a bug that could cause the progress bar to stay up forever if you tried to run prebinding on a folder with no executable files in it
Pacifist is now able to auto-detect and open the packages for the Software Restore, iLife, and Developer Tools packages in addition to the Mac OS X install packages
Added support for Mac OS X Public Beta packages
Added an option to ignore .DS_Store files when extracting
Fixed a bug that could cause the progress bar not to be updated frequently enough on Mac OS X 10.2.x
Calculating folder sizes is now optional
Updating the prebinding for a folder with a huge number of files in it should no longer cause the system to bog down from excessive paging
Added the ability to decide whether or not to use administrator privileges to install files
Added the ability to create receipts for packages
Fixed a problem which could cause Disk 2 and/or Disk 3 of some of the newer multi-DVD OS install disc sets set not to load
Fixed a problem which caused the Update Prebinding feature not to work properly under Mac OS X 10.4
Fixed a strange bug which could cause blank lines to appear sometimes in the file listing when running under Tiger
Fixed some spurious errors regarding decoding the resource fork which occurred under Tiger
Fixed a bug which could cause some files not to be extracted when extracting metapackages that contained other metapackages
The default setting is now to not update the prebinding if the OS is 10.4 or higher
Prebinding an individual folder is now greyed out under 10.4 and higher, because that functionality is no longer possible (or needed)
Folders can now be expanded by double-clicking on them
Changes in version 1.6.3
Fixed a permissions problem that sometimes caused Pacifist not to work properly on non-admin accounts
Changes in version 1.6.2
Fixed a rare crashing bug when opening some 10.1-style metapackages
Worked around an apparent bug in Panther that could cause the “Please insert disk” dialogs to fail to close when the
disk was inserted
Hopefully fixed a problem which could cause Pacifist to sometimes give spurious “BOM file not found” errors
Fixed a bug that could cause an error to be returned if the user cancelled authorization
Fixed a rare bug which could cause AppleDouble files not to be combined properly
Fixed a bug which caused proxy packages to display their file sizes inaccurately
Changes in version 1.6.1
Built with gcc 3.3
Fixed some minor UI problems
Fixed some bugs that caused errors in loading packages not to be reported properly
Updating prebinding now runs in the background rather than blocking the UI and can be cancelled
Cancelling extraction during the “Update prebinding” stage now takes effect much more quickly
Prebinding now has a decent progress bar
Table views now have an alternating blue-and-white background (Mac OS X 10.3 and higher only)
Pacifist is much quieter now and doesn’t log nearly as much stuff to the Console
Rewired the preference panel to meet the guidelines
Fixed a bug which caused the Verification Report window not to respond to the keyboard properly
The “Stop Installation” bug in the disk request screen should now work properly while loading the Mac OS X Install
Packages
Fixed some crashes that occurred while running Mac OS X 10.1
Fixed a problem that could cause Pacifist to block while a menu was down when running in Mac OS X 10.3
Fixed a problem that could cause the OS install packages on certain of the install DVDs not to load properly
Fixed a few memory leaks
Changes in version 1.6
Compatibility with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and its packages
Fixed some minor interface flaws
Small performance increases
Made the verify feature check the file size if the package does not specify a checksum
Fixed some bugs in extracting identical files from a package
Loading a package is now done in a separate thread
It is now possible to cancel loading of a package
Fixed a spurious disk-full error
Pacifist now notifies the Finder when it installs a file so that it will update immediately
Pacifist is now much smarter about dealing with situations when it is asked to extract files from a package on a disk that is no
longer inserted
Changes in version 1.5.3
Reintroduced support for Mac OS X 10.1.x
Added Dutch localization by Koen van Hees
Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect error messages in rare cases
Improved performance and reliability of the verification feature
Made the verification report files more compatible with various browsers
Other minor bug fixes
Changes in version 1.5.2
Added Italian localization by Gabriele Callari
Added a spiffy disk image background by Adam Betts
Added a New Folder button to the Extract dialog box.
Revamped some of the underlying extraction code; hopefully, improved performance somewhat.
Contextual menus
Added option to force files to be re-prebound when updating prebinding information
Added .mpkg support
Hopefully fixed an annoying bug where a document’s progress sheet sometimes wouldn’t close if installation finished
when the app was hidden
Fixed a bug in the .info parsing for the old non-Jaguar package format
Changed things so that the temporary directory where Pacifist stores files before moving them to their destinations is stored on
the same disk that the files will be installed to, to facilitate making installations with limited or no writable disk space, such
as boot CDs
Added verification of installations
Hopefully fixed a crashing bug that would sometimes occur when dragging packages onto Pacifist’s splash screen window
Added drag and drop extracting
Added support for Jaguar “Alternate-Source” packages
Fixed a bug where keyboard navigation would quit working in Jaguar
Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist to crash while opening Mac OS X 10.0-style packages that used traditional MacOS line endings
rather than UNIX line endings
Made the use of sheets more extensive
Fixed a bug that could cause lots of spurious errors to get logged to the console while updating the prebinding
Changed the behavior so that only files that were installed should get prebound
Fixed a bug which could cause Pacifist to hang when extracting a very large number of files at a time
Fixed some localization bugs
Found some places where file sizes were still being stored as 32-bit integers, causing spurious “disk full” errors on
hard drives with more than 4 GB free, and replaced them with 64-bit integers