I need to access the sandbox directory for an application installed on an iOS device, using the command line (non-gui) from a Mac or Linux. This is to help with development and testing automation. Dropping a json file into the sandbox lets me set parameters like extra debug messages and smaller refresh intervals.
A tool like iFunBox works perfectly but is graphical only, requiring numerous clicks to do this. Emails to the developers were unanswered. It also does not support AppleScript. I did find another app that provided a Fuse module, but it turned out buggy especially if the app was uninstalled and then reinstalled (in order to reset back to first time user experience). I reported the problems to the developer but there is no fix on the horizon.
The things I need to do are:
Test if an app with a specific bundle id is installed
Create Library/Caches/MYLIBNAME directory if it doesn't exist
Copy a ~100 byte json file from the Mac to that directory
Get a copy of that file
A solution that only works from Linux is acceptable too
Devices are not jailbroken and I would prefer not to need that as a requirement
In some cases I do not have the source code to the app since it is a third party using my library, so compiling different versions of the app isn't practical.
Answer is below in many comments thanks to lxt. Summary is:
Various libraries and programs associated with libimobiledevice can solve the problems
Use patched iFuse to mount an application sandbox
Use idevicesyslog to see the console log
Use ideviceinstaller to install/uninstall apps
The various libraries and programs associated with libimobiledevice are incredibly difficult if not impossible to compile as is on Linux or Mac, and there is no unified distribution of the source or binaries
For Ubuntu try libimobiledevice (may have 3 suffix), ideviceinstaller and libimobiledevice-utils packages
For Mac a search for libimobiledevice-macosx may get you some of the way there
This is going to be a little tricky, because as I think you've found out the application name is randomly generated on every install. I don't think there is a way past that, certainly that I know of. This explains the problems you're running into when simulating a new install (...the app directory name changes to a new, random hash, and then you're stuck).
Although my preference would be to access this config file in some other way (perhaps over a network, and have some code that only executes on debug/test builds check for it), if you did want to do this then I'd suggest trying something like writing a script that when you want to simulate a new install chooses the app directory that's most recently modified. But this is very hacky.
If you're not able to insert conditional code that only executes on debug/ test builds then I think the random app naming schema that iOS uses at a file system level is going to be problematic for you whatever approach you take.
Update: Regarding iFuse and libimobiledevice - out of the box it limits you to the documents directory. This is because the authors of iFuse don't entry-level users to be confused, and also because the structure is a little different depending on iOS version. You can comment out the lines in the iFuse source - fuse_opt_add_arg(&args, "-osubdir=Documents"); - to get access to the library directory through the mount. You will obviously need to re-compile iFuse yourself if doing this.
You can make use of MobileDevice Library
I know this is an old question and I doubt anyone is looking here anymore, but I thought I'd mention that you can use 'brew install libimobiledevice' to compile on the mac. There are a lot of dependencies and Homebrew really helps make it an easy process by installing them for you.
I am trying to use an application called CLUT.exe which is an old application for MS-DOS that can be used to reindex NTX files for DBF databases.
(This is not the main topic, but I am just writing this if someone wants to test the app and don't trust at all about the content).
The problem starts when trying to run the command line version through console (cmd.exe) and this error appears:
C:\>CLUT.exe [arg1] [arg2] [arg3]
run-time error R6009
- not enough space for environment
So, according to what I've searched, this could be a possible solution:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;230205
but it doesn't work and every alternative that I found to solve this over the internet is the same.
Another alternative could be to make right-click in the .exe file, go to Properties then Memory tab and increase the Initial environment memory from Auto to the max value but it doesn't work too.
Well, I am stuck and no "possible" solution is working for me. If someone is interested, knows more about this issue and want to test, you can download the application from here (click "Free Download" green button):
http://www.filebasket.com/free/Development-Clipper-programming-language/clut-exe/13996.html
or directly from my DropBox:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15208254/stackoverflow/clut_214.rar
Just to know, I am using Windows 7 and the CLUT.exe application is a Clipper based app (old programming language) that may run under windows console (cmd.exe).
Wikipedia does mention other dos emulators but, oddly, doesn't mention BOCHS.
Reindexing NTX files is not a difficult thing to do, and can be done with tools other than CLUT. For example, many of the utilities listed on this part of Download32 could be used. Otherwise, you could write your own using Harbour Project or xHarbour. Or contact me off list and I'll cook up something in Clipper 5.3.
LATER
If I read the README correctly for CLUT, it's a replacement for the DBU utility that comes with Clipper 5.x. I can supply you with a build of that if you're unsuccessful with other approaches.
I just want to ask, is there any way to insert a new record (not programatically) using xcode?
Just to be clear, I want to insert data just like using SQL Developer in Oracle (no code).
I can't find add new record or row button in xcode.
Any help is appreciated.
Not within XCode but there is a plugin for Firefox that allows you to open the SQLite database. Install the plugin, launch it and open the database file (in the app directory of your iOS simulator) and it provides you with tools to insert, delete, update, etc.
Firefox plugin: SQLite Manager
No, Xcode doesn't include such a tool, but there is an App that provides a GUI to manage your coredata-backed apps (both iOS and OSX)...
BUT:
It's a commercial app (costs money)
You cannot create or connect relationships between entities (at least, last time I checked)
Having said that, in case you're still interested in this solution, the App is called Core Data Editor and here is a link for it in the appstore.
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I've been thinking of rolling my own code for enabling my Delphi application to update seamlessly as I'll be going for "release often, release early" mentality furthermore. There are various Delphi solutions (both freeware and paid) out there and I'd like to ask if you've been using any of them or simply went on with your own solutions in this area. Any comments on the auto-update topic are welcome.
What ever scheme you use, it may be handy to know that you can actually rename a running .exe file. So rename file, copy in new file works nice. And the next time someone launch the program they will launch a the new version. This is ofcourse very handy in enviroment where many users run the same .exe file, like in citrix/terminal server/network share cases.
Years ago I wrote a simple tool which is started instead of the real program, checks for updates, loads and installs them (if any are available), and finally starts the real application.
There are however problems with that approach if your program works in a properly administered environment, where users normally don't have write access to the program directories. You can no longer simply update your own program in such environments. That's why a lot of programs these days come with their own updater tool, which can be installed to run with elevated permissions, so that program updates can be applied even though only standard users do ever log on to the system.
You have to decide whether your target audience can be assumed to run on power user or administrator accounts, or whether you will have to deal with above-mentioned problems. With Vista things got considerably harder already.
With all these problems (net access over proxies, missing write permissions for installation directories, the need to update files that the updater itself is using - just to name a few) I wouldn't try again to code this on my own. Much better to check if any one of the available solutions does all you need it to.
I use the Synapse routines GetHTTP to return a specific resource, and if found then check against the local system to see if an update is required. If so then the resource tells me what page to go to launch and I throw the URL into shell execute so the users
preferred browser is displayed.
Most of the time the download is a setup program created by InnoSetup which updates the users system and database to the latest version. When a new "paid" upgrade is needed, I then send the user to a "purchase upgrade" form. My web resources are ASP pages, so I can redirect to a different resource based on the customers version number.
For the main application (our application has a server piece, and a client piece) I have a loader which will check the server to see if the version of the client file on the server is different than the version on the client...if so, it prompts the user if the user wants to update/revert. We chose to prompt the user as sometimes an accidental bug might make it into the system and the user has to downgrade/upgrade only specific machines to help troubleshoot. I maintain a database record with the minimum version required which is updated via the database patch, so if a version must be retired then the record is updated accordingly.
I created my own solution too based on Indy for downloading and http://sourceforge.net/projects/makeupdate/ for file patching.
Before that I have used and tried several commercial tools, but no one was doing exactly what I needed.
I use TmxWebUpdate. It's free, simple and gives you good control over the process. I actually own TMS Component Pack with TWebUpdate but never really found a good reason to switch.
Edit: Link updated
We rolled our own as well. Its really not too difficult.
Our process goes something like:
When the main app is launched, it checks (using funcs from the synapse library) if there's an update available (assuming its configured to check, of course).
If so, it notifies the user and askes if they want to update.
If they do, it launches an updater .exe, and closes the main app.
The updater exe downloads the new files based on the contents of a text file it retrieves, keepiing the files in memory.
When the updater is done downloading everything correctly, it then saves the downloaded files to disk, backing up any files it replaces. This way if the download gets interupted, you dont end up with half the files installed.
Finally, it launches the main app again, and closes itself.
The trick w/ Vista is that you need to have an entry in the updater program's manifest to force it to run with administrator rights.
Normally we use the third party tool. But in some situations it was not usable so I created an own solution, which was pretty standard:
Get xml (or any other format) with update info.
If newer files are published, download and install them.
I use TWebUpdate . It works ok and has a ton of interesting options, but documentation isn't so great and I did bump into a few problems - which is why I download a full installer, instead of just the files...
I will be keeping an eye on this question, btw...
We use our own solution which follows these steps:
Application connects to http resource and downloads info file (ini text file) to memory, checks version number of newest release.
If newer version available, app downloads compressed binary package to exe location.
When download is finished, user is asked to restart application.
Upon start, application checks for presence of update package
App extracts package contents (usually a new app exe, but additional resources possible as well, e.g. updated language files etc.) - for each file it renames the current/old file to a temp name first, then extracts the new file. If the process fails at any point, the temp files are restored.
When finished, app executes new exe and closes itself.
No additional updater needed, the app exe can handle it all by itself.
For the compressed package we use our own update builder.
The package contains an index of files with a file hash, destination folder (relative path to main exe) and the compressed files.
During update we compare the stored hash with the extracted file to detect corupted files.
With Vista I see two solutions to enable Standard User Accounts to actually update the applications files:
Configure your setup to change permissions of the programs installation directory. This way files in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Your Company\You App" can be modified on Accounts with limited rights.
Example code for InnoSetup would be:
[Dirs]
Name: "{app}"; Permissions: users-modify
Install files that you plan to update to the ProgramData folder instead of the user defined directory and use this directory as an override folder. If files exist in ProgramData, use those, else check in install dir.
InnoSetup code:
[Files]
Source: "C:\Your Project\YourApp.exe"; DestDir: "{commonappdata}\Company Name\App Name\";
Same as "stg" and "GuyWithDogs", I'm using TWebUpdate from TMS. Although the documentation isn't so great, Its not so difficult to learnt.
With TWebUpdate, you have some options what the protocol you use, it could be done via HTTP, FTP or network access.
For communication layer, TWebUpdate uses WinInet. In some machines, the windows / IE URL cache can be frustating, so I've added a routine to clear the auto-update server address from cache first to ensure the information gathered from the server is up-to-date.
Ok, please bear with my noob question here.
I'm doing the simple task of making an update to my mvc application, compiling it and then moving in onto the production server.
I just wan't to know the best way to upload the compiled files. I have a single application pool, use ftp to upload the new application files and the site points to a single directory.
If I update just one view then which
files do I upload after compiling?
Is there a way to keep the site running
while I upload new code/views?
Where can I go to find out this
information?
Generally, you can update views without needing to re-cycle your web application. You would just want to replace the old version of the file with the new version, which can be done with a simple X-Copy command.
If there are code changes, then you will need to upate the web project DLL, which requires the app to recycle. This may or may not be a huge disruption, but it does mean that users may have their session interrupted, and lose some state.
Now, the question of how you could go about doing this is a little more complex. You can write a deployment process into your build scripts, which may be the easiest approach. The trick here, though, is that if you want to only include files that have changed, this can be a little trickier using vanilla NAnt or MSBuild tasks. You may also want to look at the WebDeploy tool from the IIS team. I've not used it much myself, but it is designed specifically to deploy web projects.
You may also want to hit google for some commercial deployment tools if none of the options so far seem to work for you.