A while back I wrote up a blog post on deploying the Install macOS Big Sur application. As one of the solutions, I posted a script (based on Greg Neagle’s installinstallmacos.py) which listed the pkgs from Apple’s software update catalogs so you could download them.
During and after WWDC, I wanted to see if I could build a SwiftUI app. I thought that building a user interface for this task would be a nice practice project.
Ironically, since I want the app to work on Big Sur, I could not use any of the new Swift and SwiftUI features Apple introduced this year. Even so, since I had not used SwiftUI to build a Big Sur application, most of the features Apple introduced last year were still new to me.
It was often unexpected to me which parts turned out to be challenging and which parts were really easy to implement. For example, implementing a preferences window, turned out to be super-easy, but it took me two false-starts to find the correct approach. Communicating with the preferences system of macOS is also very easy, but so poorly documented that you are always second guessing if what you are doing is right.
Apple’s documentation for Swift and SwiftUI on this has definite highlights, but is very sparse overall. I am still not sure if some of the decisions I made while putting this together were “good” choices.
Nevertheless, it works! I think it might be a nice tool to have, so I put it on GitHub. You can just download the app from the release page and use it, or clone the repo and take a look at the code.
Constructive feedback is always welcome! I am still learning this as I go along, too.
