Copying standalone to PowerBook

Ben Rubinstein benr_mc at cogapp.com
Fri Jan 30 14:06:05 EST 2009


On 3/11/08, Mark Stuart wrote:

> I'm having an issue with my standalone application "disappearing" on a
> PowerBook after its first use.
> The second launch of the application, it doesn't start.
> 
> Here's what I did...
> I developed an application on WinXP with RunRev v3.0.
> Built the standalones for: PowerPC, Intel, and Windows; with the default
> values in the application settings for each platform.
> Copied each of the 3 standalone folders onto a USB 1GB drive.
> Took it to the PowerBook, and copied the "MacOSX PowerPC-32" folder to the
> Applications folder using Finder.
> Clicked on the "application.app" folder (under the above folder) and the
> application launched. So far no problem.
> 
> I kept the Finder open to the "application.app" folder. It showed that the
> application file size was 3.1 MB, on first launch of the application.
> Now while using the application, the file size changed to 92 KB.
> I then closed the application, and tried launching it again, and nothing -
> it wouldn't load.


Hi Mark,

Did you ever find out what was going on here?  We've just run across what 
seems to be the same problem: in this case the app's developed as well as 
deployed on Mac.   During main development, we'd been copying it from 
development Mac to deployment Mac by network or USB stick.

Now a month later we needed to install on a new Mac; so my colleague copied it 
from the CD that was part of the project archive; and reported something very 
much like you saw, with the app halving in size after first run.

We've still got the app on my machine, and in any case the stacks that it's 
built from are archived, so I'm not particularly bothered; and while I haven't 
had a chance to test yet, I'm sure we can fix this by copying from my Mac 
again by USB stick or network, instead of off CD; and my further guess is that 
if we zip the app and put the zipped version on CD, we will then be able to 
copy that off and unzip without then finding this problem arising.

So I don't think we've got an actual roadblock for installation on this Mac, 
nor on creating a CD that can be used in future; but if this hadn't been 
discovered for a year, we might have had more of a problem, so I'd like to get 
  to the bottom of this and understand what's happening.

So... did you ever figure this out?  Presumably it's some kind of interesting 
attribute that can be lost from a Mac application bundle by transmission 
through certain routes; though what that attribute would be that causes an app 
to eat itself is a mystery to me.  (Of course if I'm wrong that copying the 
app off my Mac resolves it, then the whole transmission issue will prove to be 
a red herring, we'll have to look at the environment on the Mac we're 
installing on.... and I'll start getting a lot more bothered.)

Any light you can shed would be most interesting,

- Ben






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