Check For Updates denied on Sierra when iTerm is in a subdir of /Applications

• iTerm2 version: 3.0.10
• OS version: 10.12.0

No prefs to attach, this happens even when installed fresh and no prefs exist yet.

Detailed steps to reproduce the problem:

1. Put iTerm.app into some subfolder of /Applications, say, /Applications/foo
2. Launch iTerm.app
3. Try to "Check for Updates"

What happened: I see a dialog box with this: "iTerm2 can’t be updated when it’s running from a read-only volume like a disk image or an optical drive. Move iTerm2 to your Applications folder, relaunch it from there, and try again."

What should have happened: It should've checked for updates. It should not have claimed that it's running from a read-only volume or optical drive, because it isn't. Also, the new security "features" of Sierra shouldn't be blocking this, because it's not being launched from the Downloads folder. I moved the .zip into /Applications/foo and then unpacked it. I would think that subdirs of /Applications would be fair game.

I believe this is a bug in macOS. This happened to me once, too. I think something got confused because after deleting everything and reintalling it, it was able to auto-update.

I can reproduce this reliably for fresh installs of iTerm2, on multiple machines :(

I can reproduce it if I move the zip file into /Applications/Foo/ and extract it there, but if I first unzip in ~/Downloads and then move iTerm.app into /Applications/Foo then it updates OK. Do you see the same?

No, I don't see the same as you. I see the same as I did before.

I do see the same as you if I use the Finder to move the app. If I move it from the terminal, it doesn't work.

The underlying issue is this: http://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2016/06/29/sierra-and-gatekeeper-path-randomization/

I guess switching to .dmg distribution would solve the problem. I'm personally not a fan of DMGs, but my preferences are less strong because of this issue.

Milestone changed to %Feature Complete 3.1

One post in that thread suggest using xar to create a signed archive. Xcode 8 does that now. Maybe that's a way to avoid a DMG. (I personally don't mind DMGs.)

Hi, I was considering updating to Sierra and wanted to confirm - will autoupdating still work if iTerm2 is in the /Applications folder? I didn't fully understand the gatekeeper path randomization article. In case it matters, my installation method of choice is via homebrew cask (https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-versions/blob/master/Casks/iterm2-beta.rb).

Yeah, move it to /Applications or $HOME/Applications and you'll be fine. /usr/local/whatever ought to work too.

The solution is to use LetsMove. I hate dmg's and installers as they're both user hostile.

closed