Shell script CP cannot overwrite directory

Question

our users have written a shell script to copy an application into into the /Applications folder on OSX. it works great the first time, but the second time they get an error. This is a new development, it apparently used to work fine before we changed the App name.

The shell script runs the following:

cp -a ApplicationName.app /Applications
open -a '/Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/MacOS/ApplicationName' --args -LSRC autolaunch

The first time it runs, it works fine, the application is copied over and then it launches. the second time it comes back with the following errors

[jrivera@chamomile] $ sudo ./InstallScript.sh /SRNM ABC1234567
cp: cannot overwrite directory /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Headers with non-directory ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Headers
cp: cannot overwrite directory /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Resources with non-directory ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Resources
cp: cannot overwrite directory /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/A/Resources/fr_CA.lproj with non-directory ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/A/Resources/fr_CA.lproj
cp: cannot overwrite directory /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/A/Resources/pt.lproj with non-directory ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/A/Resources/pt.lproj
cp: cannot overwrite directory /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/Current with non-directory ApplicationName.app/Contents/Frameworks/Sparkle.framework/Versions/Current

I'm not exactly sure why that's happening. it's the exact same script in the exact same location copying the exact same things 30 seconds apart. I dug into each and the directories and files all appear the exact same file type. I tried adding other commands to the cp to force it (-RfXv) but got the same thing. Any ideas? maybe it's a strange thing with sparkle?

Answer 1

I would suspect that the problematic files/directories have some extended attributes, and that cp is having problems overwriting the target when it has those attributes. (cp when preserving permissions often seems unreliable on different platforms).

Given that, there are a couple of workarounds to explore:

• remove the target /Applications/ApplicationName.app before re-copying it.

• use rsync, e.g.,

  rsync -vaz ApplicationName.app/ /Applications/ApplicationName.app

Removing the target first may interfere with people using it while you are updating it; rsync works incrementally (and almost always updates more rapidly than cp).