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I want a an app that is "self-contained" (I don't know if i use the right word. "putting the app into trash bin will remove everything" is what I meant). But the app requires some resources to run. I usually put those resources into a folder. I want to move those resources into the App folder ( package contents). Can I do that? Is it a good practice to do that?

When I test the app directly running from Xcode, the App runs fine. But if i run it from finder, the app will say fails to create resources folder because permission denied. I checked the app's folder permission - User(me) has read/write access. I am wondering what is causing this different behavior.

The last option is to use Application Support folder, but I don't want to leave trails when user deletes the app.

Can someone help me out here?

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  • I believe this is the standard for packaging apps on Mac OSX. I also believe that you need to have execute privs on a directory in order to access it. Commented Apr 13, 2012 at 23:27

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Applications live in the directory /Applications, where users don't generally have write access. Requiring an app to have write permission in system folders is extremely bad practice.

Runtime files should live in ~/Library/Application Support. While that folder tends to accumulate some cruft, unless your application leaves behind really large files, that shouldn't be a problem.

If you want your application to be self-contained, it needs to come with all the files it needs from the get-go, and not write anything to disk.

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It sounds to me like the resources in question are not WRITTEN BY the app at runtime, but BUNDLED WITH the app at build time.
@jahroy: Were that the case there would be no problem.
Sorry I should be more clear about the question. I did intend to do modification of resources in the run time. I'll go with application support route. Thanks

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