Bin To Pkg -

For teams converting a binary (e.g., from a Go or Rust build) into a .pkg on every release, automation is key.

Example GitHub Actions Workflow:

name: Build PKG from Binary
on:
  release:
    types: [created]
jobs:
  build-pkg:
    runs-on: macos-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Download binary from release
        run: |
          mkdir -p root/usr/local/bin
          curl -L -o root/usr/local/bin/mytool https://github.com/user/mytool/releases/latest/download/mytool
          chmod 755 root/usr/local/bin/mytool
      - name: Build PKG
        run: |
          pkgbuild --root root \
                   --identifier com.user.mytool \
                   --version $ github.event.release.tag_name  \
                   --install-location / \
                   mytool.pkg
      - name: Upload PKG to Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v1
        with:
          files: mytool.pkg

./installer.bin --extract --target /path/to/extract

or

./installer.bin --noexec --keep

The Linux Way Linux distributions understood this decades ago. They didn't distribute compiled binaries in tarballs for system utilities; they distributed .deb or .rpm files. This kept systems stable and consistent.

The Modern DevOps Way Even in the containerization era, the concept holds. A Docker container is essentially a "super-package." It wraps the binary and the operating system filesystem together. It is the ultimate evolution of Bin-to-Pkg.

Language Specifics

file_type=$(file -b "$INPUT_BIN")