How do I keep hidden files and folders out of view in the DMG in an automated way?

I’m evaluating DropDMG for packaging up our product releases on OSX, which like our Windows builds with installers, we would like to be completely automated. I’ve messed around with DropDMG a bit, but so far my .dmg looks pretty messy when I open it due to the following additional files and folders scattered around in the window:

.DS_Store
.fseventsd
.Trashes
.Volumeicon.icns
.DropDMGBackground

I understand why these need to be present, but when I look at other .dmg files out there, people have moved these icons outside of the field of view for the default size of the window. This seems like something DropDMG should be able do for you automatically? If so, I’m missing how to do so.

All files beginning with a period are invisible by default in Mac OS X. It sounds like you’ve changed a secret Finder preference so that it shows invisible files, but your customers will not see them.

Many of my users are themselves developers, so I think they will be seeing this. It seems to be enough of an issue that other people have made an effort to move these .* files out of view with the default .dmg window size. For example take a look at this one:

http://www.telestream.net/flip-player/download.htm

Then expand the window to see the hidden files.

Since your application is the one placing the files in the .dmg and already positioning some of the icons (e.g. the application bundle and the application folder link), it seems like it would be trivial to add this feature and that virtually everyone would want it to be on by default.

I’m not sure that it’s trivial. For example, the icon positions are probably not settable if you haven’t enabled the Finder’s AppleShowAllFiles preference. However, I will add this to my list of feature requests to investigate. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks. I’m modifying a shell script I found to do the dmg creation and icon placement to also place the hidden folders out of view. If it works I’ll send it your way to check out.

Colby

DropDMG 3.2.5 will automatically move these items out of view.