DesInstaller 2.0.1
Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Developer: Nicolas Zinovieff Support: http://krugazor.free.fr/software/desinstaller/documentation.html http://krugazor.free.fr/software/desinstaller/DesInstaller.php System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.0 or later. Not universal binary. Released: March 9, 2006 Audience: All user levels Strengths: DesInstaller allows you to inspect , remove or archive and remove installed packages and their components. Weaknesses: DesInstaller removes installed packages. For now, it only works with Apple's "pkg" files, but that, according to the developer, may change in the future. The software was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.8. Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. Disclaimer: When briefly reviewing share-freeware I will often use the developer’s product, functions and features descriptions. All other comments are strictly my own and based on testing. |
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Publisher’s Summary
DesInstaller is a simple tool that reads the receipts generated when you install a .pkg file with Apple's Installer. Every file installed by this package is removed, even if it has been modified, and archived if you ask the DesInstaller to. If you decide to use a reinstaller, you will get a tar archive, for portability, and a shell script with a "command" extension, to be double clickable. Please be aware that even if the reinstaller does not actually care about its position when invoked, the two parts (the tar archive and the term shell script) are both needed in the same folder.
Introduction
I am a sucker for testing “like-me” application just to see if the one I now use can be one-upped. I have used AppZapper so when I came across Deinstaller I thought, here’s another tool to test.
Alas, I did not read the fine print. Deinstaller removes packages, not installed applications. I wrote this review anyway; who knows when I may want to rid my self of an installation package or learn enough to tweak one. In many ways, testing this software reminded me of the first few times, in classic Macintosh OS’s, I used ResEdit. This sense of imminent “doom or disaster” held me back in using heavily using ResEdit even after having spend hour reading and studying Zen and the Art of Resource Editing by Derrick Schneider, Hans Hansen, and Noah Potkin – 1992. I feel that way about DesInstaller
Working With
Installing this application is simple. Open its .dmg file, and drag it you’re your applications folder. There all sorts of application installer package related things you can do with the product, some of which I’ve listed below.
View Packages — Open DesInstaller and click “Show Packages” button. I was appalled to find that I had
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Display Package Contents — Click the Reveal Contents button to toggle the files drawer and double-click any package from the list. The drawer displays files that have been installed in selected package. This may take a while so be patient while the “beach ball” spins. This works but I have no idea what much of this packaged stuff does, so I restricted myself to looking.
Backup a Package for Archive Purposes — You can also open a package or receipt from any location to get the files list, save a reinstaller or remove it. Therefore, to backup a package, select package to backup. Click “Save as Reinstaller” button and choose location for files.
A Few Surprises
Okay, doc, how many .pkgs do you have installed? Where are they hiding?
A bit of a search with EasyFind and I found that I had 115 installer packages, hidden in my Harry’s Tiger > Library > Receipts Folder. This amounted to 97.6 MB of files.
There were things like DuctTape and Essentials that I’d never heard of. There were also packages associated with applications I’d installed such as Business Card Composer, Disc Cover, HP Printer Drivers, Norton Anti Virus, OS X 10.4 updaters QuickTime and a plethora of security updates [SecUpd packages]. For example, were six QuickTime installer packages [e.g., version 7.03 to 7.13]; eight Mac OS X update and nine iPhoto related packages.
So what to do? Well I initially chickened out and thought I’d leave this stuff on my drive. It was just a case of Caveat Emptor — Since I had no idea what I was doing, I did not actually click the remove page button.
Then I had a light bulb moment. I remembered that I’d read somewhere that Apples Software Update [Preference Pane] stored the updater .pkgs after completing installation, although I had no idea how this preference was set. Well my timing was grrreat. There were three new Apple updates, related to daylight savings time, waiting to be installed. Guess how many new packages showed up in my receipts folder? So as experiment one, I tossed the QuickTime updaters, all but the last one, as well as all Macintosh OS X security updaters for 2006. I rebooted and my computer seemed to work normally. In a few days I’ll toss the largish number of OS X 10.4 updates. Deinstaller, at least that the level I’ve used it, simply works.
.pkg vs .dmg — And just be a bit more pedantic, a .pkg is not a .dmg files. A .dmg file is a Mac OS X disk image. These are buckets for storing things like applications or data files in compressed form in a manner similar to a Zip file. When using the later, you must do something more than click on a package and follow instructions. You must do some real work, like dragging an application to your applications folder. These are just two different ways to deliver software… don’t let it worry you. The only things to remember is that packages are stashed in the library > receipts folder. By contrast, I can see a .dmg installer in my downloads folder, and toss it when I’m done with it.
Another Feature
Examining New (Application) Packages Prior to Installing Them — I played with this feature, it works, but I’m not smart enough to use it to change an installer packages contents. Again, caveat emptor, let the buyer (user) beware.
The developer recommends that you “inspect a package prior to installing it. From the application File menu choose “Verify package before installing” and select desired package. You will have the option to backup files that will be replaced by installing a newer package, or to remove files from package BEFORE installation. To do so choose Open Package... from the application File menu and locate the installer package to open.”
Review Limits
I did not work with the restore package features because using terminal is not one of my skills. However the publisher provided the following help. “Make sure the two parts of the reinstaller (the tgz archive and the shell script) are both in the same folder. Double-click the shell command file. The terminal window will open for administrator password to run the script.”
I also did not check setting different receipt locations — “If necessary, choose “Change Receipts Root...” from the application File to set another receipt location. To restore default settings, set the receipt root to /Library/Receipts/ folder on your startup disk.”
Deinstaller Version 3.0b3 — I downloaded and tested this version but it was not stable on my system. It not only could not read package contents, easily visible with version 2, but it kept crashing. Discretion being the better part of valor, I removed it from my hard drive.
Conclusions
The program works smoothly as it is supposed to. Although one can delete packages directly from the library > receipts folder, there is a certain elegance in using Nicolas Zinovieff’s fine application. The price is right and after all, in a senior moment, you might forget where all those pesky disk space-consuming packages are stored.
IMPORTANT
If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t play with this application except to deinstall packages.
PS
Check out the review of the uApp application deinstaller in this issue, it’s a real application space saver. I used it to deinstall the beta version of this program.
PPS
Like all deinstallers, a cautionary disclaimer from its developer, because this is a dangerous program:
“Be aware that DesInstaller is not an intelligent tool. It does not perform modification/moving tests, and removes what the OS thinks was installed. For power users, you can add and customize the tgz archive with optional files, or whatever. I really think of creating a simple way to make archives of what you want to save, but this is not the point here: we only want to remove stuff that was installed and that is no longer needed.”
