FCP Files
The kerfuffle caused by FCP 5.1.3 reminded me of a couple of the exercises I worked on for the Optimizing Your FCP System book.
For those of you unfamiliar with the inner working of Mac OS X applications, FCP is actually a collection of thousands of files, which are installed within various predefined directories on your system - for example the preference files that FCP Rescue 5 manages. This means that if you only delete the FCP application itself you’ll only rid yourself of some of the files.
One way to see all of the files associated with a particular application is to view the “bill of materials” (BOM) file. You can use applications such as Pacifist to access this information, but you can also use Terminal if you’re comfortable in that environment.
ADVISORY - Until you feel at home with command line tools you need to exercise extreme caution when you’re working in Terminal.
- In the Finder, choose Go > Go To Folder (Shift-Cmd-G).
- Enter the location /Library/Receipts/FinalCutProUpdate5.1.4.pkg/Contents (where FinalCutProUpdate5.1.4.pkg is the name of a specific package - this will change depending on the particular application and version).
- Locate the Archive.bom file.
- Launch Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).
- Enter the command lsbom -s.
The command lsbom lists the contents of the bill of materials file. The option -s prints a list of paths to each file contained within the bom file.* - Type a space and drag the Archive.bom file from the Finder to the Terminal window and the directory path should appear.
- Press Return to execute the command.
* There’s a Macworld article, “View program installation details” that has more on the lsbom command.
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