Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

132
CHAPTER 6 COMMON LEOPARD MAINTENANCE
Frameworks, Components, Receipts, and Contextual Menu Items
Besides the extra items mentioned previously that are installed and created by applications, a
number of applications may install some additional support files. These include special development
frameworks, special components, and contextual menu items. Most of these items can be
safely deleted; however, you should use care when doing so.
Contextual menu items (which are often installed in the Contextual Menu Items subfolder in
one of the Library folders) are items that enable some application-specific behavior to be accessible
from a contextual menu. If you delete the application that the item is attached to, then it will
cease to function; so obviously, if you find these “dead” items, you should delete them.
Components (found in the Components subdirectory of a Library folder) are generally not
needed when you remove the application they are associated with either. The only problem is
that these items are often named in such a way that it’s hard to determine what component is
attached to what application, and deleting the wrong one can cause an existing application to
fail. In general, if in doubt, leave it alone. If, however, you are sure that you no longer need a
component, you may remove it.
Frameworks are trickier. One application may install a third-party framework, and a subsequent
application you install may also use that framework, so even if you delete the initial
application that installed the framework, by removing the framework you could damage another
application. As such, we generally recommend against uninstalling any frameworks unless you
are absolutely sure that it’s safe. Other than taking up some disk space, an unused framework
won’t interfere with your system in any way.
Finally, most installer packages leave behind a receipt (which is a copy of the package file) in
the /Library/Receipts folder. When you delete an application, it’s safe to delete any package files
here associated with it. Removing receipts for existing applications could, however, affect the
ability to upgrade the application in the future—and many update packages use receipt data to
determine the necessity or eligibility for an upgrade.
Other Hidden Application Files
The last type of file that may be installed along with the application are hidden or obscure files.
These files are installed for one of two reasons. First, some applications install files that are
accessible from the command line—while these files are not normally viewable from the Finder,
they are not specifically hidden from you (often applications will check with you before
installing command-line tools). The other reason applications install hidden or obscure files is
specifically so you don’t find them; this is usually for licensing reasons and to prevent you from
pirating the software or reusing timed-out demo versions of software.
The “hidden” command-line tools (which really aren’t hidden; they just aren’t immediately
visible) can easily be removed from the command line (this is covered later in the book, beginning
in Chapter 18). The other files—the ones that are actually intentionally hidden—are
problematic. While they generally don’t affect your system in any way (other than restricting the
use of a particular application), the idea of them lying around bothers people.
While there are no specific instructions for finding and removing all of these intentionally
hidden files, there are some suggestions:
• Look around your file system in the command line (see Chapter 18). Lots of files that are
hidden from the Finder are easily revealed in the command line. If you find files in a
Library folder or subfolder in the command line that you don’t see in the Finder, they are
probably being hidden.