Well Slydude, I did a quick look and also cheated for some other info with a Google search on just "InstallHistory.plist" and came across some interesting stuff.
Looking at my InstallHistory.plist with the old "Property List Editor" it shows I have 123 "installed" items which are dated from Dec 2, 2013 to present. The first for "OS X 10.9" to the latest for "iTunes 11.3" Jul 16, 2014 which all makes sense as I just did the iTunes update last night.
In between with a quick glance seems to be everything, even non-apple stuff that I gather is installed with the installer. Not much sign of any "click and drag to your Applications folder" type stuff - unless there was an appropriate update and done with some installer.
BTW: An interesting I discovered in Safari to do a search, when I entered
/Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist and hit enter, it took me to the file on my hard drive. sort of neat and something that I didn't know. It works almost better than "Go to folder....
Now if you really want to get blown away and getting back to the topic, have a look and try some of the Terminal suggestions from here:
how to check what’s been installed on your mac |
I tried the first suggestion in Terminal:
cat /private/var/log/install.log | open -f
and holy moley!!!
It provides a nice dated list but waaay more info than needed and it would probably take me a few hours just to scroll through quickly.
So bottom line and to skip all the crap, yes, the /Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist file does seem to list
all OS X installs that were done with the OS X installer. And all includes Apple's stuff and non-apple stuff.
I hope this helps. And sorry to babble on so much...
Have fun looking if and when you get to your 'round toit.