Apple refuses to solve my installer problem

A while ago I wrote about two problems I was having with the 10.6 installer and then a little while later how I had solved one of them with a bit of a hack. I had filed the other one as a issue with Apple, and I got a response back on the bug recently.

As a quick refresher: The problem is that there are a number of installers, both from Apple and from third parties, contain scripts that make the assumption that you are always installing on the root volume. Obviously this is a problem with things like InstaDMG, DeployStudio, or even System Image Utility. I managed to solve this class of problem for 10.5 by wrapping the installer in a chroot jail, a solution that worked better than I had hoped. Unfortunately the 10.6 installer breaks when I try to wrap it the same way. My best guess is that it is dying while trying to enumerate the volumes so that VolumeCheck scripts can run... but when using the command line version they are never run.

The answer I got back from Apple on this was a single line of text telling me that installers need to be written correctly to target non-boot volumes. I am more than a bit disappointed and angry at this response from Apple, as it means that this problem will not be fixed, and those in charge of fixing it do not see it as a problem and see the answers to this situation as lying with others. There are a few problems with this attitude:

1. Apple has proven on more than a few instances that it is not capable of consistently authoring packages that do the right thing in these cases. iTunes, the iLife Updaters, and iWork installers are just a few cases. If Apple can not get this right then what hope is there that third parties will get it right (even accepting that Adobe will never get within visual distance of getting it right).
2. Apple does have a product that needs exactly this setup: System Image Utility. Both in the NetRestore-from-installer and the NetInstall paths the installer needs to work on non-booted volumes with a variety of packages. That the SIU team has been very slow to acknowledge problems with their approach in this area is frustrating. They got the iTunes installer finally working (Ya!), but it took me yelling at them personally at a conference for it to happen (Booo!). I expect more from Apple.

So what do I do now? How can I overcome this class of issue? I have a few possibilities:

1. Come up with some brilliant solution that tricks the 10.6 installer into working inside a chroot jail
2. Create a system that unwrapped every form of .pkg (and there are a number of formats), replaces all of the scripts with a version that is wrapped with a chroot jail
3. Write my own version of the installer that does things right
4. Yell at Apple for a while, and get other people to do so as well in the hope that this decision will be reversed
5. Convince every .pkg author out there to write their installers to work on non-booting images
6. Just accept that some installers will never work in InstaDMG, and hope that one of them is never in a software update, or something else absolutely required (ie: give up)

The first three items are ones that I could in theory do (although there is probably no hope for the first, and the latter two are going to be difficult). Of the last three the fourth item is the one that I wish would work (it would be the best solution), and the last one is the one I am most afraid of.

So, if anyone is reading, and would like to do something, please tell Apple how much value there is to you in installers working on non-boot volumes. If you would like to mention the Radar number 7699285 that would be great.