Building app distributions - some best practices?

[Doug Lerner]

I have an app I have been working on, with versions for OS X, OS 9, Windows
and Linux. The app consists of the executable and also a data folder that
goes in the same directory of the app. I'm developing on OS X.

Here is what I've been doing so far for each distribution to make it
available, with some questions to. I would love to hear how other people
recommend doing this as well.

OS X
----
This is the easiest. I select the app and the data file and then choose
"create archive from 2 items" from the Panther finder menu. Then I rename
archive.zip to the nameOfMyApp.zip. I see no problems with this so far.

Windows
-------
I do the same as for the OS X build. This works, but when I expand the
archive on the Windows machine there is always an extra folder inside called
_MACOSX. Inside that extra folder there are what appear to be 1K aliases to
all the files in the app directory itself. Anybody know why this happens?

Linux
-----
In the Terminal, I go to the directory containing the app and first "chmod
+x" the app to turn on it's execution permission bit. I don't know why
Revolution doesn't automatically do this. Then I tar and gzip the app and
datafile. This seems to work ok.

OS 9
----
I am not sure of the best way to bundle this for distribution, because the
app needs to preserve its macbinary resource fork. What do people use for
this so they can distribute it?

Thanks!

doug