For the PowerUser and the Developer, a must have app.

Ever wonder what that installer from Microsoft did to your system? What exactly did Flip4Mac instal and where? Not quite sure that you removed all the executables when you deleted the elements you could find?

This app shows the location and elements of a given installer package; what gets installed and where (the bill of materials) in a nice graphical format. You can even extract components of the install individually (maybe you only wanted the Citrix app and not the other stuff that comes with it?)

Has been a mainstay of my bag of tools for many years.

Using Pacifist I have force-installed an entire 2Gb MacOS X Snow Leopard update over a fatal default Installer first attempt *.
I couldn't believe it actually worked :)

Brilliance √


* MacMini 2007 model: startup was damaged by first attempt, so I booted using external Snow Leopard USB drive and since Installer.app wouldn't allow and external install, Pacifist came to the rescue.

Awesome feature set and well worth the money. Version 2 worked flawlessly for years!

Impressive job on version 3.0, a must have utility.

Keep up the great work!

Beautiful update, both cosmetically and function wise. New Preferences and new built in Help. The "Search Receipt" feature is nice as is the possibility to treat apps as folders when installing over an existing app bundle.

Great app and developer.

how to uninstall pacifist

Hmm. Tried Pacifist 2.5.1 again, under OS 10.5.2, and it didn't crash the second time. Difference was, the first time, I dragged a package installer to the Pacifist icon, in the Finder, to launch Pacifist, and while Pacifist was scanning the package, it displayed the Pacifist registration dialog. My copy isn't registered (shame on me), so I clicked the "Try it" button, and Pacifist crashed. The second time I tried it, I didn't drag the package to Pacifist to launch it--instead, I opened Pacifist, clicked the "Try It" button, and it didn't crash; then I opened the same installer package I had before, via Pacifist's "Open Package" button, and it opened properly.

So, I tried a third variation: launch Pacifist, click its "Try it" button, then drag the package to the Pacifist app icon. It opened the package without crashing.

I tried a fourth variation: with Pacifist not launched, I dragged the installer package to the Pacifist application icon, in the Finder. Pacifist launched, displaying its registration dialog; I didn't click the "Try it" button, but instead waited for the scanning process to complete. When it did, Pacifist crashed.

So it seems Pacifist 2.5.1, at least under OS 10.5.2, crashes at the end of the package scan, if you launched Pacifist by dragging the package to the Pacifist app icon in the Finder.

I tried the crashy opening variation with Pacifist 2.0.1, and it didn't crash, but 2.0.1 doesn't start scanning the package until you dismiss the registration dialog, so maybe that difference will point to a fix.