Mac Unidentified App

Question

I normally create some Mac apps on one computer and transfer them to another computer for testing. Several months ago I ran into the "gateway problem" where the Mac blocks unidentified apps and solved it by going to the security & privacy and changing my settings to allow apps downloaded from "anywhere". Now all of a sudden apps that I transfer for testing will not run on the test computer. When I double-click on the app there is a brief flash but nothing happens. I can click on the same app file that I transferred to the test computer four months ago and it has no problem opening.

I'm running OSX 10.9.2.

Answer 1

It sounds like some part of the application isn't getting transferred properly between the two computers. My guess would be that the executable file (generally AppName.app/Contents/MacOS/AppName) lost its execute permission in the transfer. I Googled that Console error message, and found a couple of cases where missing execute permissions caused that error (1, 2).

I haven't tested, but this might be a result of transferring it via SMB instead of AFP file sharing (SMB version 2 is now the default between Mavericks computers). If I'm right, there are several ways to fix/avoid the problem:

1. Add execute access with something like chmod +x /Applications/AppName.app/Contents/MacOS/AppName (note: it's possible there are other executables in the the app bundle that'll also need execute added).
2. Transfer the app with AFP instead of SMB. You can force AFP connections by using the Finder's Go menu > Connect to Server option, and using "AFP://servername.local" to connect.
3. Zip the app (using the Finder's File menu > Compress option), transfer the zip archive, then expand it (using the Finder/Archive Utility) on the other computer.