Ios-deploy permission denied

xyyx0110 · March 19, 2024, 10:00pm

I installed ios-deploy on a Macbook OSX Ventura 13.6.1 using “brew install ios-deploy”
Ran “brew info ios-deploy” and updated the Preferences in Defold to point to that directory
Created a bundle for the shadertoy sample and got the following error in the Defold console with “Install on connected device” and “Launch installed app” checked :

Cannot run program “/usr/local/Cellar/ios-deploy/1.12.2”: error=13, Permission denied

I’m not an iOS/OSX expert, so I decided to run ios-deploy manually to determine if there is a problem with my bundle. However, it deployed fine from the terminal when I ran:

./ios-deploy --debug --bundle sample.app --no-wifi

Is there something I need to do extra to allow Defold to run ios-deploy after brew installs it? Also, I need to mention that ios-deploy complained it couldn’t find ‘sample.app’ when I first tried to do it from the terminal, so I grabbed the ios-deploy binary, put it in the same folder as the bundle, ran “brew remove ios-deploy” to make sure I was using the local binary in the same folder and then the deployment worked. Not sure what I’m doing incorrectly? Yeah, I can create a script to do this in the future, but it would be nice to have it all just work in the Defold UI if that’s possible?

britzl · March 20, 2024, 4:47am

I don’t think this is necessary. By default, the editor checks if ios-deploy is installed in well-known locations, so you only need to specify the path if you use a custom installation of ios-deploy.

xyyx0110 · March 20, 2024, 5:36pm

Thank you for the reply and I just tried reinstalling ios-deploy using brew and removing that setting in Preferences, but then got this message:

Resolving ios-deploy location…
Could not find ‘ios-deploy’ on this system, please install it and try again.
If it’s already installed, configure its path in the Preferences’ Tools pane.

Not sure if there’s something strange with my system (vanilla OS X install) since the “Resolving” message obviously shows Defold looked for ios-deploy in a well known location.

Either way, this is a permissions issue and not a Defold one AFAIK… unless some entitlement needs to be requested from OS X to use automation in Privacy & Security? Like I said, I’m not an expert with Macs and posted this in case others have seen it and can help out. I’ll go the scripting path to manually push apps to my devices. The bundle feature is nice in Defold and a big help btw.

xyyx0110 · March 20, 2024, 5:51pm

Thank you for your reply. Turns out it was something on my end. I’m used to supplying just the path when asked for it, but in this case the path plus filename was necessary. I put the following in the Preferences dialog and it worked:

/usr/local/Cellar/ios-deploy/1.12.2./bin/ios-deploy

Btw, I don’t think the code resolves well-known locations before trying the Preferences location or at least not in my case. I removed it from Preferences, installed ios-deploy via brew and got this complaint:

Resolving ios-deploy location…
Could not find ‘ios-deploy’ on this system, please install it and try again.
If it’s already installed, configure its path in the Preferences’ Tools pane.

github.com

defold/defold/blob/cbb4098f3199cfd40dfad88b85e2571dfa2d79d5/editor/src/clj/editor/app_view.clj#L2432

    
      
          (defn- ios-post-bundle! [prefs output-directory project ^OutputStream out launch]
            (g/with-auto-evaluation-context evaluation-context
              (let [game-project (project/get-resource-node project "/game.project" evaluation-context)
                    project-title (game-project/get-setting game-project ["project" "title"] evaluation-context)
                    app-path (io/file output-directory (str project-title ".app"))]
                (future
                  (error-reporting/catch-all!
                    (with-open [writer (PrintWriter. out true StandardCharsets/UTF_8)]
                      (try
                        (.println writer "Resolving ios-deploy location...")
                        (let [ios-deploy-path (ios-deploy/get-ios-deploy-path prefs)
                              _ (.println writer (format "Resolved to '%s'" ios-deploy-path))
                              _ (.println writer "Listing devices...")
                              device (or (first (ios-deploy/list-devices! ios-deploy-path))
                                         (throw (ex-info "No devices are connected" {:ios-deploy-path ios-deploy-path})))]
                          (.println writer (format "Installing on '%s'" (:label device)))
                          (ios-deploy/install! ios-deploy-path device app-path out)
                          (when launch
                            (.println writer (format "Launching %s..." project-title))
                            (ios-deploy/launch! ios-deploy-path device app-path out))
                          (.println writer (format "Install%s done." (if launch " and launch" ""))))

In any case, thanks again for the reply!

britzl · March 20, 2024, 8:16pm

It should look for it in a few places:

github.com

defold/defold/blob/dev/editor/src/clj/editor/ios_deploy.clj#L24-L38

    
      
          (defn get-ios-deploy-path
            "Find ios-deploy path or throw if it's not found
          
          
  Performs file IO"
            [prefs]
            (if-let [prefs-path (not-empty (prefs/get-prefs prefs "ios-deploy-path" nil))]
              (or (fs/existing-path prefs-path)
                  (throw (ex-info (format "ios-deploy path defined in preferences does not exist: '%s'" prefs-path)
                                  {:path prefs-path})))
              (if (= :macos (util/os))
                (or
                  (try (fs/existing-path (process/exec! "which" "ios-deploy")) (catch Exception _))
                  (fs/existing-path "/opt/homebrew/bin/ios-deploy")
                  (throw (ex-info "Could not find 'ios-deploy' on this system, please install it and try again.\nIf it's already installed, configure its path in the Preferences' Tools pane." {})))
                (throw (ex-info "ios-deploy is only available on macOS" {})))))