Author Topic: Version-specific Extensions (or even Extras) directories  (Read 3999 times)

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stuart

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Version-specific Extensions (or even Extras) directories
« on: May 14, 2009, 05:08:52 PM »
In a similar vein to this suggestion, it would be very useful to support multiple Extensions or Extras folders, and (if possible) auto-select the correct one.

Each release of OS X requires different drivers in order to work on stock x86 hardware - but at least with overlay kernel extensions in an Extras directory (and potentially on an EFI partition) this is segregated from the System extensions.

This could be made massively more useful, even, by adding support for (auto-)selectable directories in order to have:

Extras
Extras/Extensions/10.5.6/
Extras/Extensions/10.5.7/
Extras/Extensions/10.6.0/

... or:

Extras
Extras/10.5.6/Extensions/
Extras/10.5.7/Extensions/
Extras/10.6.0/Extensions/

... or similar.  The scheme could either be hard-coded or left up to the user.

If it were possible to detect the version of the Mach kernel on the system partition during the pre-boot stage, the correct directory could be auto-selected... but even failing this, selecting the relevant directory with a command-line switch would also work.

This would allow people to create generic boot utilities/installers which work on multiple releases of OS X, and already have all of the correct extensions in place to start the system successfully.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2009, 01:43:24 PM by stuart »