Copying standalone to PowerBook

[Sarah Reichelt]

>> 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.)
>

At the time, Mark send me his stacks and I found the problem which was
that when he wrote his preferences file, I had the same name as the
application file and was being saved in the defaultFolder so it was
over-writing the actual application file inside the bundle.

Cheers,
Sarah