Problems with Finder background images produced in Mac OS X 10.6?

Question

Morning all.

I'm creating DMG installers with background pictures. My build machine is 10.6. I'm having problems getting them working consistently:

• If I create one on 10.4 it works fine in 10.5, 10.5 and 10.6,
• If I create one for 10.5 it works fine in 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6,
• But if I create one in 10.6, the background picture shows in 10.6 but does not show in 10.4 or 10.5.

I think I recall having seen similar reports in one or two places but there's not much information on the web.

Has anyone here come across this problem? Is it recognised? Fixable? Unfortunately I have no option of running 10.5 on my build machine...

Thanks!

Update:

This is a confirmed known bug in 10.6 . I will update this if there is any extra news.

Answer 1

There is a breaking change in the format .DS_Store files between Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The format is backward compatible but not forward compatible. The .DS_Store file stores information such as layout and background picture for a directory.

Thus, to create background pictures that work on 10.5 and 10.6, 10.5 must be used.