On my dev machine, I built my app to the 'dist' folder, the app was signed in either a 'Development' provision profile, or a 'Distribution' provision profile.
I then published the app to Mac App Store and it is alive. When I tried to install the app, I noticed that Mac App Store may install my app to my 'dist' folder (i.e. the build folder) instead of 'Applications' folder.
Is there a way to make sure that the app will always be installed to the 'Applications' folder?
Testing on a non-dev machine seems to be working fine.
It seems like the App Store app on your Mac has recognised that the app is installed elsewhere on the system and is doing an update of that rather than installing a second copy in the Applications folder. That’s a bit weird, but it seems like a reasonable choice.
Presumably, if you delete the copy of your app from that dist
directory then App Store will install it in the normal place.
Testing on a non-dev machine seems to be working fine.
I think that’s what you need to focus on. It’s reasonable to assume that your customers won’t have development builds of your app lying around on their hard disk (-:
Another interesting case to explore is to install the app on a customer system, then move it to a different directory, and update it. I suspect that’ll also update the moved copy.
One final wrinkle: macOS 15 (currently a release candidates) lets users specify an alternative volume to use for large App Store apps.
Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"