MENU_ITEM_LOCATION is incorrect for all-user installation on macOS

[mrclary]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open reports and couldn't find a duplicate

What happened?

@jaimergp, when selecting "Install on a specific disk..." from a package installer created by constructor (to install for all users) on macOS, the environments are created in the correct place but the application bundle is created in ~/Applications instead of /Applications.

Conda Info

No response

Conda Config

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Conda list

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Additional Context

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[mrclary]

@jaimergp, perhaps this is a bug in constructor? Maybe it's not supplying _mode='system' to menuinst.api.install?

[jaimergp]

Hey! Thanks for the report. Technically, menuinst should "detect" whether the installation is for a single-user or not via the presence of .nonadmin file in the conda installation root (see this block).

This used to be Windows-specific and I don't think I have added this logic in constructor, so the bug is indeed in constructor 😬 We need figure out a way to detect whether the installation is single-user or all users and add the .nonadmin file accordingly.

I'll mention the issue in the relevant PR there, thanks!

[jaimergp]

@mrclary - this commit should be enough to create the .nonadmin files: conda/constructor@3f0b97b.

However, thinking about it, they were not being created before, which means that something is also off in menuinst (which should have understood that the installations were admin-like).

[mrclary]

menuinst/menuinst/_legacy/win32.py

Lines 140 to 142 in 237e259

	used_mode = (
	mode if mode else ('user' if exists(join(self.prefix, u'.nonadmin')) else 'system')
	)

I found this only in the legacy code for Windows. Nothing like this in platforms/base.py:Menu or the platform modules. I have not tested admin install on Linux, and I don't recall checking the shortcut location for the admin install for Windows. So it is possible that shortcut locations for all platforms are created in a user-specific location...

[jaimergp]

It's here, in the elevate_as_needed decorator (which I want to rewrite anyway):

menuinst/menuinst/utils.py

Line 326 in 237e259

if not (Path(base_prefix) / ".nonadmin").exists():

[mrclary]

Aahh, then perhaps this preceding clause is the problem?

menuinst/menuinst/utils.py

Lines 315 to 316 in 237e259

	if os.name != "nt":
	return func

[jaimergp]

Spot on! 🎯