The application cannot be opened because its executable is missing.

Question

I have an application that I have been developing for some time now. Recently launching the application via a double click presents a dialog that says "You can't open the application RepoWatch because it may be damaged or incomplete."

Launching the application via open ./RepoWatch.app gives me "The application cannot be opened because its executable is missing."

I usually launch the application via ./RepoWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/RepoWatch simply out of habit (which DOES work), so I am unsure how long this has been happening, or what change happened immediately before hand. The most likely change is that I put cp Info.plist ./RepoWatch.app/Contents/ into my make file in order to version Info.plist without versioning everything in the .app bundle.

I have looked at Info.plist many times and cannot find anything wrong with it. The file opens up with Property List Editor without any errors. Saving from Property List Editor does not make the file "work" (if it is to blame in the first place).

The permissions as far as I can tell also look sane:

$ ls -l
./RepoWatch.app/Contents/Info.plist
-rw-rw-r--@ 1 dgrace  staff  789 Feb  1 23:20 ./RepoWatch.app/Contents/Info.plist
$ ls -l
/Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Info.plist
-rw-rw-r--  1 dgrace  staff 5750 Aug 21 15:41 /Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Info.plist

I am at a loss as to what to try next.

And here are the contents of Info.plist (Even though nothing has really changed in quite a while):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"&gt;
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
    <string>6.0</string>
    <key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
    <string>English</string>
    <key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
    <string>RepoWatch</string>
    <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
    <string>com.doomstick.RepoWatch</string>
    <key>CFBundleName</key>
    <string>RepoWatch</string>
    <key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
    <string>1.0.0</string>
    <key>LSMinimumSystemVersion</key>
    <string>10.6</string>
    <key>CFBundleVersion</key>
    <string>Beta26</string>
    <key>NSMainNibFile</key>
    <string>MainMenu</string>
    <key>NSPrincipalClass</key>
    <string>NSApplication</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Answer 1

The problem is likely due to an invalid CFBundleExecutable property value in the Info.plist file you are copying into the application.

In Xcode projects the default value for this property is a special variable (placeholder) value (${EXECUTABLE_NAME}) that is expanded (replaced) when the build system builds the application. Are you sure you need to copy this file manually? Maybe you can add a script build phase that makes whatever changes you need after it has been expanded and copied into place by the normal build process.

While you are at it, you should check for other placeholder values in the file. It is likely that you will need to fill in CFBundleName (others may also be necessary, depending on your application type).

Answer 2

OK, some (more) shots in the dark.

1. The docs for LSMinimumSystemVersion say that the value is supposed to be a string with the form n.n.n. You might try adding a “.0” to the end of your value.
2. When you use ./RepoWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/RepoWatch to run it manually, are you using some sort of completion or filename generation, or are you typing it all in (especially the filename of the executable)?
   • Maybe the executable filename has some odd invisible/combining/look-alike character in it that does not match the value in Info.plist. Try ls -w /path/to/RepoWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/ | xxd to look at the bytes for anything non-ASCII.
3. Does plutil -lint /path/to/Info.plist give you an “OK”?
4. The @ after the permissions in the ls -l output indicates some xattrs. These could be harmless, but have you looked at which ones are there with ls -l@?
   • If one of the xattrs looks suspect (or even if not) you could (cd /path/to/RepoWatch.app/Contents/ && mv Info.plist Info.plist.save && cat Info.plist.save > Info.plist) to get a copy without the xattrs and test with it.
   • If using the non-xattr'd file still causes problems, you might try systematically modifying and deleting keys (after making a backup copy, like the .save above) to see if you can cause a different error message that might help indicate the problem.

Answer 3

Project Menu > Set Active Executable