How to make a MacOS (Installer) DMG?

[JaneX8]

Have you read the Documentation Contribution Guidelines?

• I have read the Documentation Contribution Guidelines.

Description

I reluctantly purchased an M1 Apple device simply for building Wails app in the future. I have setup Homebrew, Go, Wails, Xcode and managed to build a universal .app file. Thank you for that great work. Now I only need to figure out how to test the universal app on a non-ARM Mac. And also, how to build an DMG Installer for Mac.

I've found some references to DMG files but none in the documentation and none offer a solution:

• Information/docs for making installers? #1292 (comment) (most relevant)
• Support Self-Updating  #1178 (comment) (less relevant)
• Permssions denied on cgo.a when running wails serve #485 (comment) (irrelevant)

Self-service

• I'd be willing to address this documentation request myself.

[leaanthony]

There's a node utility that does a pretty good job. There's no native go way currently (not if you want a working .DS_Store file). Mat has a good write up on the process here https://medium.com/@mattholt/packaging-a-go-application-for-macos-f7084b00f6b5

[JaneX8]

I just figured out the basics by making this script. But I like the background in Mat's approach, I'll check that out too. Thanks.

After running wails build -platform darwin/universal -clean and setting the corrects paths I made it using:

# Set variables
APP_PATH="/Users/xx/wails-test/wails-test/build/bin/wails-test.app"
DMG_PATH="/Users/xx/wails-test/wails-test/build/bin/wails-test.dmg"
TMP_DIR="/tmp/dmg-build"
VOLUME_NAME="Wails Test"

# Clean up any existing temporary directory
rm -rf "$TMP_DIR"
mkdir -p "$TMP_DIR"

# Copy the .app file to the temporary directory
cp -R "$APP_PATH" "$TMP_DIR/"

# Create the Applications shortcut
ln -s /Applications "$TMP_DIR/Applications"

# Create the DMG file
hdiutil create -volname "$VOLUME_NAME" \
    -srcfolder "$TMP_DIR" \
    -ov \
    -format UDZO \
    "$DMG_PATH"

# Clean up temporary directory
rm -rf "$TMP_DIR"

# Output result
echo "DMG created at: $DMG_PATH"

I think it would be great to have a generic "DMG generation" option when using wails build on or for macOS to make macOS 'Installers'.

[JaneX8]

There's a node utility that does a pretty good job. There's no native go way currently (not if you want a working .DS_Store file). Mat has a good write up on the process here https://medium.com/@mattholt/packaging-a-go-application-for-macos-f7084b00f6b5

For future reference this was mentioned in the article: https://gist.github.com/mholt/11008646c95d787c30806d3f24b2c844.

[uqix]

Just found another wrapper of hdiutil: https://github.com/create-dmg/create-dmg