macos installers - detect multiple user/top-level installations?

[cscheid]

See https://bsky.app/profile/bweatherson.bsky.social/post/3lbubjzih422w -

"If you use a Mac, and upgrade Quarto, and don't remember each time whether you're installing for "Just this user" or "All users", you end up with two distinct installations and this can lead to unpleasant confusion."

pkgbuild has preinstall and postinstall scripts. We could, in principle, attempt to detect if an existing version of Quarto looks to be installed in a different path than that requested by the user.

The problem is what, if anything, we should do about it. I don't think we should prevent the installation altogether, because some users might legitimately want a user with a different version than that of the system. At the same time, I don't think preinstall scripts can ask for interactive confirmation or anything like that.

[mcanouil]

Just a word of caution as the package is not necessarily used directly by users, i.e., Homebrew is using it.

• https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/306926139caaea2b1f5cd81813e4823956683e0d/Casks/q/quarto.rb

[cscheid]

After discussing internally, we've decided that this is not something Quarto can appropriately detect and manage, because, as I mentioned above, some users might legitimately want a user-local install with a different version than that of the system.