I like this blurp on the Boxer home page:

Boxer home page wrote:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Boxer has no esoteric configuration panels to pore through, no big fat library interface squatting between you and your fun. It’s the unobtrusive DOS butler that configures and launches your games as discreetly as possible. So here’s some screenshots of them instead.

17MB looks like a big fat library anyway though.

17MB looks like a big fat library anyway though

That's a "problem" I noticed with a lot of programs on OS X, just look at Dosbox itself, the OS X download is 4.8MB, the Windows Installer is 1.4MB big (the Dosbox app itself is 14.4MB big on OS X) . With my now 4 Weeks OS X experience I *think* this is due to most programs being universal programs, so binaries for both intel and ppc platform and when you rely on many libraries that are not in OS X default installations, you have to build and include static libraries in the programs (and again universal). So 17MB is not THAT big for OS X stuff 😀

I assume there are tools on Mac OS X to strip out unwanted code??

not really, since, again afaict, the static libs are normally compiled into the binary.
Rhoenie the OS X maintainer could probably tell you more

Holy crap thats cool can't believe i didn't know about boxer.

Wonder what will happen when both 32 and 64bit versions are packaged in the universal binary 😀

What I find strange is that Boxer apparently comes with the full version of Commander Keen 4, which AFAIK is not freeware?!

Full? There is a shareware version: ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/share/4keen.zip

Unfortunately MacUpdate picked up that 0.86 beta without my input or me actually wanting them to, grr - it wasn't intended as an official release and hasn't been fully localised or tested. That's also why the what's-new changelog is ridiculously brief (it's the changelog since the beta 5 days before it), and doesn't include more important info like it being updated to use DOSBox 0.73. But, no sense closing the stable door now I suppose.

The reason it's 17MB (rather than 4.4MB) isn't because of universal binaries but because the default install includes the shareware episode of Commander Keen 4 and demos of Epic Pinball, X-COM and Ultima Underworld, each of which also have 512x512 cover art. (and yes, they're all shareware/freeware.)

Some will call it bloat, but the sample games have proven to be a very popular addition to the package and help first-time users get a good idea of how Boxer gameboxes work. I'm planning to push automatic application updates without the sample games though to save space. Users can delete the games afterwards if they wish, of course.

Thanks for clearing this up Vigil. Great work, great tool, great site!

rcblanke wrote:

Thanks for clearing this up Vigil. Great work, great tool, great site!

Seconded! I enjoyed reading the blog with the narrative about how the "Make fake CD" dialog box came to be.