Some added notes from the trenches:
Above, I describe a small stub setup that downloads a larger payload. However, if your payload is large from the server, you're going to be looking at the screen stuck at the "Running package scripts..." notice and a jammed progress bar while it continues to download over Curl your larger payload. One solution to that in your preinstall Bash script is to do this:
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set visible of process "Installer" to false'
That super neat trick hides the installer so that you can show something else. That way, the customer doesn't think your installer just jammed.
Then, build yourself a simplistic ObjectiveC application that looks just like that Installer but shows a more active progress bar (use a timer) and then displays a few messages like "Downloading..." and "Finishing download..." and stuff like that. Of course, you can do it in Qt, but even the most minimum Mac-based Qt widget app (not statically compiled) is 8.9MB zipped, whereas in ObjectiveC you can make an app that does the same thing in a mere 32K (unzipped). (Oh, and for you QML die-hards out there, a widget-based app has you topped on file size. I was seeing 12.1MB zipped for something comparable in QML.)
Once that Curl has finished, it can then kill the ObjectiveC process and reverse the osascript to get the installer to show you the Finish page.
If deploying a large commercial application, and especially if you need to hook up special high-permission items and require script control, then you may not want to use either the .pkg or .dmg formats at all. This is because, psychologically, customers are not likely to want to download a huge honking 200MB+ DMG or PKG file. Instead, they would be more likely to download a smaller file, run it, and then when it says Installing, it does the rest of the download steps. (I know it's the same wait time, but psychology is important in product marketing.) Take a look at Norton's Antivirus for the Mac. (There's a free trial on their website.) They basically made an ObjectiveC / Cocoa application and then zipped it. However, it's a stub setup that's very small. When you run it, it then shows the typical EULA and then starts downloading components from the web, and putting things into the appropriate places.
