[jbmelby]

Some time ago (on October 19th, I think) I downloaded and installed the Apple Developer Tools package for OS X, which seems to have been created on October 18th (the Inspector apparently sometimes has problems with dates.)

There is a (supposedly) newer version on the ADC site now, posted on November 30th--but it appears to have been created on October 4th. And just to confuse the issue more, the information on the site indicates that this "new" version is to be used with the OS X PB CD that shipped in October!

Does anyone know

1) Which version of the Developer Tools is actually newer? (Remember, I said that the Inspector has displayed some anomalies concerning dates for me before, so I don't necessary rely upon it as the final authority.)

2) If the newly-posted version is indeed newer than the one posted shortly after the initial OS X PB release, does the note on Apple's site mean that it is not compatible with the PB build contained on the first publicly available CD that was released in September? Or is this just another example of the false impressions often created by the occasionally cryptic notes that Apple sometimes posts with its software updates?

[dark3lf]

The only dev tools package that you can use (assuming that you are working with 1H39) is the one that you've already got installed. If you try to install one of the other two packages, you get a strange bom error.

[Angus_D]

I find it suprising that Apple hasn't kept the old DevTools posted... I would have assumed that the new 21E4 tools or whatever the build no is would be backwards compat.

[jbmelby]

I find it suprising that Apple hasn't kept the old DevTools posted... I would have assumed that the new 21E4 tools or whatever the build no is would be backwards compat.

That is the logical thing to assume--which probably explains why it isn't the case.

[jbmelby]

I wish I could figure out the reason for all this damned double posting...

[This message has been edited by jbmelby (edited 12-04-2000).]

[naden]

The new version of Public Beta Dev tools IS backwards compatible with the original PB.

Also it IS possible to get the previous release of the Dev Tools. Open up connect.apple.com in OmniWeb or iCab and you need to have the Processes window up. Click the download button for the Dev Tools and you can see the username and obscure password that is assigned to you by Apple. Now use that info to ftp directly to Apple's servers. That way you do have access to the old file.

I do this because on a dial up I don't want to risk disconnection and ftp allows me to resume downloads.

Hope this helps.

naden.

Ok -- what do you do when you keep try to install the developer toolkit and get "Could't write bom to path Please try installing again."
Thanks

Originally posted by LionDude:
Ok -- what do you do when you keep try to install the developer toolkit and get "Could't write bom to path Please try installing again."
Thanks

I am pretty sure that I am using the newest DevTools, since I downloaded it 3 days ago, but upon listing /Developer/Applications the dates are also all Oct. 3 and 4 (I can't do much checking beyond that because I am SSHed into my machine from work and I'm still somewhat new to the command line). Oh well...they work just fine and I am using 1H39.

As far as the above quoted error, I would wager a guess that you used Stuffit Expander to decompress the .tgz file (or is it a .tar.gz? doesn't really matter...). Use the command line tools. I suggest the following becuase Gnutar gives me an error whenever I try to untar and un-gzip at the same time(I'm probably just not using the right options or something):

gunzip -d whateverfile.tgz
gnutar -xpf whateverfile.tar

After you do that to the DevTools archive, just run the package installer (as root, of course) and you should be able to successfully install it. Hope this helps.

[Chaaaosss]

This is kinda related I think:

What are the letters after the dash after "gzip" or "gnutar" like "xzvf" "xpf" etc? When does one use a certain combination of these characters instead of another?

Thanks.

[Chaaaosss]

This is kinda related I think:

What are the letters after the dash after "gzip" or "gnutar" like "xzvf" "xpf" etc? When does one use a certain combination of these characters instead of another?

Thanks.

[dark3lf]

Man is your friend. Type 'man gzip', 'man gnutar', etc...

Actually, I just went through this whole problem of un-tar-ing the Developer Tools download (the 97.7MB tar file). There are several issues:

1) If you use a browser to download the files (such as IE 5 beta that came with OSXPB, you need to set the "File Helpers" preference for .tar files to just "save to disk" rather than post-process with stuffit expander or some other tool. Otherwise you get some weird stuff (like partially expanded tar files, and the error message where it says "Could not install BOM to path") There's nothing wrong with using a browser for downloading, just make sure it's set to just download and nothing more.

2) After talking to Apple Developer Support on the phone, they sent me a message saying I needed to use the following command in the terminal to expand the .tar file:

gnutar -zxvf filename (where filename is the .tar archive)

This is confusing, since, as someone previously posted, usually one would just type gnutar -xf (or xvf). It turns out this gnutar will return an error when trying to un-tar the DeveloperTools .tar file unless the -z option is used as well. I imagine, although this is just a guess, that this has to do with the compression scheme used for the tar file.

Anyhow, the above works, for whatever reasons. After doing this, you should get a .pkg installer, which should then have no problems with the installation.

This was all a bit of a pain in the ass, and could have been avoided if Apple would simply post a readme/instructions file on their software downloads area. Either that or using a different compression format (zip would probably have been just fine, no?)

-Dave