Is application bundle fully replaced on upgrade from App Store? - ios

The following use case:
create a strings file (not localized) and deploy the application to your test device
localize the file (en.lproj or similar), make some changes to the new file and remove the original file
deploy the application on the device
What I noticed that very often (always?) the application will still use the old non-localized file. The reason is that apparently the file is still in somewhere the application bundle, even though it has been removed from the project. iOS's logic is that if a file of a specific type is looked up, it first checks in the root of the bundle for the non-localized version, and only if it doesn't find it does it go deeper into the localized folders. (Is it just me, or is this logic kind of backwards? I'm used to first looking for language specific file, and then falling back to some defaults, but it might be my Java background.)
Sometimes (always?) removing the app from the device completely doesn't help either. What does in this case is a CMD+SHIFT+K, which cleans the build folder, and after the app is built and deployed again, the correct file is used.
A worse problem would be if such a thing leads to an app crash, like some strange issues with Nibs or whatever - I have seen those as well...
The question is: what would happen if the first version of my app in the apple store had the non-localized file, and the second version localized it? When the user upgrades the app, would they get the same behavior as me during development (i.e. outdated, non-localized file used)?
I can't imagine because I think this would be a cause of a lot of grieving and bug requests, but I can't tell for sure as I haven't yet published any iOS app.
If the behavior is correct when upgrading from the store, why is it? What is so different? Are the files stored locally on my computer somewhere and used when I deploy?
Can anybody share their experiences?

Related

Providing default population to "Library/Application support" folder

I'm writing an iOS app which needs a ~60MB resource file to work correctly. I would like to provide this file with the app itself, so it can work straight after installing it from the store without downloading extra data at the first launch.
I also want to be able to update such file by downloading a new version of it from a specific URL. I thought the most appropriate folder to store this file would be "Library/Application support", as specified in the guidelines provided by Apple itself.
My problem is that I can't find a way to provide the "Library/Application support" folder with a default population using xcode 9. I don't want to have multiple copies of this file around to avoid wasting space, and I want the possibility to update this file to a newer version, overwriting / replacing the old one.
This might be a newbie question (I'm a newbie of iOS development) but I really couldn't find anything related to pre-populating that folder.
You cannot delete anything from your distribution bundle. It's just not allowed.
So you options are:
Distribute the resource with the app, and create a copy in "Library/Application support".
Don't include the resource with the app, and download it on first run.
You didn't say what the resource is, so I don't know if this would be an option, but... Include only a portion of the resource with the app, copy it into "Library/Application support" and "update it" on first run.

Pass app to Xcode

I've been running a Xcode project on my iPhone but I haven't upload the binary yet. The thing is that I've lost the code on my Mac (that's what happens when you don't commit con GitHub) and the only thing I still have from the project code is the "app" that the iPhone saved when I run it for the first time. Is there any way to pass the code from the iPhone or see the code?
No. Your code was compiled, linked and packaged to produce the application, and it is the resulting compiled binary that has been installed on your phone.
You may be able to retrieve resources (storyboards, XIBs, images, plists...). For the code, there may be decompilers (not sure if there are any for Objective-C or Swift, though), but they will not reproduce your original code, just code that compiles to the same thing (i.e. without comments, with arbitrary names for local and instance variables, etc.).
Don't you have a Time Machine backup of your project?

iOS 8 App Extension and Host App in separate project files. Is it possible in Xcode 6?

Currently we're using premake5 to generate our project files, as we develop multi-platform. Obviously we don't need premake to know anything about the extension (as it's iOS8 exclusive feature) but we're facing a problem: Every time we regenerate the main app project file (which happens sometimes) we're forced to manually add all the files and configure the extension, which is dull and error-prone.
Is there a way to add the app extension (a Today Widget) to a separate project? Pbxproj files aren't version control friendly as its contents seem to be shuffled every time you save. So, saving a patch file with all the changes needed doesn't seem like an alternative.
I know this is a broad question about a convenience issue, maybe seasoned Xcode devs know some trickery (or maybe it's just something obvious we're missing here).
Thanks all in advance.

Update and test assets on iPhone without rebuilding the application

We are developing an iPhone game and I would like to know if is possible to copy new or updated assets (images, animations, sounds or whatever) on the device and test them without rebuilding the application in XCode.
We would like to simplify the production pipeline process and we are trying to avoid our artists to rebuild the application every time they modify the assets.
Any advice is much appreciated.
Fede
Yes, I did it in one of my projects.
My strategy was easy, at the start, I stored the new assets in the app documents folder using a wifi tool specially created for that. Then, when the game needed a resource it checked if it was at the documents folder, if there was, it loaded, if not, it loaded the one from the bundle.
No, because any files that are updated in the XCode side will need to be rebundled and rebuilt. I'm surprised that this is an issue because the build process is remarkably faster between cleans. You're probably not rebuilding the entire application from scratch (ie after a Clean) each time, are you? XCode should detect any resource changes and update them on the device.

app.xml consistently overwritten

I am building an IOS app using Flash Professional 5.5.
The building goes fine, however, I am needing to edit the app.xml file to make a couple of things work. When I do this, save it and then publish the app, the app.xml file is overwritten and the changes I made are gone.
How do I get Flash to keep using the app.xml file I have created rather than it rebuilding a new one every time I publish the app?
I had the same issue, related to this other issue: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/909/cpsid_90916.html. I followed the tutorial many times, but every time the file was overwritten and I could not publish with AIR. How I solved: I changed the contents of the file the way I needed, then I write-protected the file (then I compiled again). This way, Flash could not overwrite it anymore.

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