title: MacOS app packaging - Is there a recommended way to share frameworks between related apps in a suite
body: <p>I have a large application suite with more than 40 applications and a very large number of frameworks which for practical reasons (size being the REASON) should be shared by all. 
  Total size should be around 240Mb uncompressed but if each app was totally self contained I have calculated that would actually add a factor of about 10 so 2400Mb which for an application suite which is typically used on vessels at sea and usually with totally rubbish internet connections is a complete NON starter. Not to mention appalling waste of disk space!</p>
  
  <p>Right now I have each application being packaged as an .app bundle and each contains its own copy of the required runtime frameworks in its own Contents/Frameworks folder.</p>
  
  <p>I'm now wondering how to deploy the suite without amplifying the disk cost of all these frameworks e.g by multiplying it by the number of apps!!! (Although some apps only use a smaller framework subset). The windows version of the suite solves this in a different way of course and is actually packaged using windows installer but thats a complete other story. For MacOS (which is quite new to me) we have app bundles and I have seen scant discussion on the topic of app suites nor many examples indicating how to solve this issue. </p>
  
  <p>My naive approach might be to try to place symlinks in the FrameWorks folder to point them to a root app package. That would mean I would have one app package for the suite. It would contain multiple nested .app bundles. Each would have in its own frameworks folder individual symlinks pointing to the root Frameworks folders for each framework used. I suspect this could work if it doesn't violate some signing rule!</p>
  
  <p>Could this approach work?
  What have others done?</p>
  
  <p>Are there any other suggested approaches?</p>