Xcode External Build System Make Package Install

Question

I created an "External Build System" project in Xcode to run my custom Makefile when run. By default this works fine, but when I want to pass it -C ~/Desktop/GIFPaper/ package install so the full shell command equivalent would be:

make -C ~/Desktop/GIFPaper/ package install

I get this error:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/make package requires dpkg-deb.
make: *** [internal-package-check] Error 1
Program ended with exit code: 2

The weird thing is that I have dpkg installed and if I open Terminal and change the directory to:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/

and the run:

make -C ~/Desktop/GIFPaper/ package install

everything works fine. So far I have added:

-C ~/Desktop/GIFPaper/ package install

as arguments to the Run scheme. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I guess you are using a Makefile depending on this file (or a similar rule):

https://github.com/DHowett/theos/blob/master/makefiles/package/deb.mk

It requires that dpkg-deb is in the path or will fail with the error message you posted.

You say you installed dpkg, but this doesn't mean an executable called dpkg-deb is available to make when invoked from Xcode. Indeed, with your external build system, make is invoked with a restricted PATH. Your solution of installing dpkg-deb and copying to /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/ is quite dirty and involves installing the missing binary in Xcode itself, in the first directory of the default PATH.

Alternatively, you can modify the PATH directly from Xcode, by checking "Pass build settings in environment" (this is the default) and adding a PATH build setting. Ideal value would be ${inherited}:/usr/local/bin or ${inherited}:/opt/local/bin depending on where dpkg-deb is actually installed.

Answer 2

I figured it out, for anyone with this problem in the future. Download dpkg-deb using curl http://debmaker-osx.googlecode.com/svn-history/r5/trunk/dpkg-deb > dpkg-deb then set its permissions as an executable with chmod +x dpkg-deb then copy it to the Xcode bin directory with sudo cp dpkg-deb /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/dpkg-deb

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

I had this problem. First of all I installed dpkg with brew install dpkg but if I ran make package install i received this error

dpkg-deb: file `com.mycompany.mytweak.deb' contains ununderstood data member data.tar.xz     , giving up
dpkg: error processing com.mycompany.mytweak.deb (--install):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:

This because the compress algoritm of dpkg was incompatible with iphone, so i simply did a backup of my installed dpkg-deb with

mv /usr/local/bin/dpkg-deb /usr/local/bin/dpkg-deb.bak

and I copied the dpkg-deb locate in

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/

in the folder where was my installed dpkg.deb with

sudo cp /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/dpkg-deb /usr/local/bin/dpkg-deb

Now it works.