My apartment burned down a few days ago and my beloved MacBook Pro was one of the many electronic casualties. While I of course back up (using Time Machine) and my backup drive managed to survive, much to my dismay many of the most important files seem to be missing from my Time Machine backups. Namely, all of my recent XCode projects. In fact, the entire directory (titled "Re-Programming") which housed all of my development projects is inexplicably missing from my latest backups.
Curiously, it seems that some of my older backups do contain the missing folder (May 10 has the folder, while May 19 through the latest do not).
I would have wanted to try Migration Assistant to bring my files over to a friend's computer but I'm unable to because my backups were made in Lion and he is using Snow Leopard. I'm fairly certain it wouldn't help though (not only is the directory missing, but a search for certain header files I remember the filename of don't show up in Search).
I've done some googling and it seems Time Machine does not backup XCode build folders to save space. This makes sense as it would take up a lot of space and are easily recreated by building your projects. But why on earth would Time Machine not backup my oh-so-important XCode project files?
The plot thickens though. Even if, for some strange reason Time Machine has a bug that prevents it from backing up XCode projects, what about other projects? I had some Android projects in there too, maybe even some old HTML/CSS/PHP happenings. What happened to those, and why the ENTIRE directory, not just the XCode projects? And why did it USED TO backup my most important directory and suddenly stopped without my knowledge back in May?
Am I missing something here? Perhaps they were placed in a weird place that isn't obvious to me? Any help is appreciated.
Sorry to hear that. I believe TimeMachine backups are just a .sparsebundle files. You should be able to mount the file directly and browse through it to see if you can find any of your project files.
https://superuser.com/questions/147998/backing-up-my-xcode-projects
I am not sure about Time Machine but here are some alternatives!
Related
I had a practical question for my own work at home. I want to use quad monitor for my coding and other work. I can do this with my macbook pro attached to external triple monitor. But it is not practical because of all the cable management and Macbook Pro is barely keeping up with the performance running it. So what I wanted to do was having my PC run triple monitor and my Macbook as forth screen. Code on my pc and share/update the files in the htdocs directory on my OS X. Like how FTP works.
I found this link: http://www.itworld.com/article/2844141/how-to-share-mac-os-x-yosemite-files-with-windows-10.html
But I'm not sure if I will face sudden obstacles in doing this with my htdocs directory or other directories where my work is stored and updated from time to time.(example:Symfony projects)
I hope I mentioned everything. Thanks in advance!
Well, you can use one of the free cloud based, file-sharig service, like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox.
But files will not be updated immediately, you need to wait few seconds (in the best case scenario). So it might get frustrating quickly.
Also, from my experience, OneDrive on Mac is not the best choice when it comes to a Symfony project - it stops working after a while, probably because a lot of cache files, so I need to restart it and it's not usable at all.
Another solution might be using a version control system (f.e. Git) - but you would be able to see the code changes only after a commit and push (and do it manually, of course).
I ran out of space on my MacBook Air (128gb) so I started investigating the hard drive in order to find things I can get rid of. Obviously cleared the derived data and archives but I also found a folder I hadn't noticed before - com.apple.DeveloperToolsand it takes 32gb (!!!!!!!!!) of space! that's crazy on a 128gb set up... Anyone knows something about this folder? Is it data that rebuilds itself once deleted? Can I do something about it?
Seems like it contains data of old Xcode versions...
I cleared that folder, and everything is fine.
I develop both on my desktop and laptop, and I am frequently switching between them. Are there any problems that could arise from keeping a project folder in my dropbox and always accessing/editing from there? I'm running the VS2010 on both, but W7 on one and W8 on the other.
I'm using it often. But I do experience some issues. It seems that sometime VS and Dropbox conflict. This shows by leaving some temporary source files or by errors during compilation of file being locked.
In fact I came here while looking how to solve them. But still they are only a little issue and I keep using it that way for a long time.
EDIT: It is not just me. See Visual studio 2012 and dropbox don't play nice together question on SuperUser.
I'm using Dropbox to host my project and I edit and build directly on there and have experienced no problems, ever. Win7, VS2010, CPP. I find Dropbox to be simpler and equally robust to than version control software. I'm a big fan. I should say Microsoft OneDrive once failed me, horribly, and I no longer trust it. With Dropbox, I always check the icon in the systray carefully to make sure it is finished updating before I turn my computer off.
I use both git and Dropbox, as I also switch which machine I'm working on. This way I can use source control with the rest of my team, while also able to pick up where I left off. My 2 PCs that sync are my one at work and at home. Both desktops, both almost always on and running dropbox.
Rarely I get conflicts, when a machine is offline or something. The solution 99% of the time is to simply delete any conflicting files. Because I'm constantly up to date with git, it's fine if I ever have to delete all my local code, since I can always get it back.
So it's really for nothing other than being able to run out of work on an urgent task, and then resume where I left off when I got home.
My company is still running Snow Leopard and we're thinking about upgrading to Mountain Lion (Edit: Mavericks) soon. We are developing iOS and Mac OS X applications and have a small break between the old projects and the new projects. What this means is, that we can start over with the new applications on the new version. But what happens to the old versions? They don't have ARC, Storyboards etc... I know you can switch off ARC but we want to make sure that we will still be able to commit updates to our old projects and we can't afford to put lots of time and effort in the conversion process.
I spent some time reading the user comments below the xCode update on the AppStore and read that the new Version deleted old projects. Of course we have a backup but this makes me uncertain if it's the right step.
Does anybody have experience how this works in a non personal environment? At home I'm running Mountain Lion and xCode converted small projects by itself. I'm just not sure about large scale projects...
Thanks for your time!
Edit: I will upgrade one system tomorrow and then try to post the results and maybe some tipps, important steps and things to be aware of.
Tipps what to consider when doing an upgrade:
Before you start
Take your time for a good backup! - You can regard data which is only
located on one harddrive as non existend.
Start with one system first and try out everything before doing the
major upgrade.
Installation
Consider it takes way more time than it does at home! The
MountainLion Download took >5 hours because of a symmetrical internet
connection. Installation time was ~1 hour (MacMini 2009 - 4Gigs Ram
1067). + xCode Downloadtime ~1hour
Before you install the new xCode make sure all your projects and your old xCode Dev Folder are
backupped.
When the installation routine asks you to delete your old xCode do so
(I didn't do it and now I have to manually assign each project to the
new xCode. I've to delete the old version manually too and it's a bit
more complicated if you have to do the research which files you are
allowed to delete and which not)
Then you have to download the different xCode
libraries. There goes at least 1 additional hour.
Time of the downloading- and installation process so far: ~8 hours. (Keep in mind we've a slow internet connection)
Projects
Copy your projects and don't run your conversion and tests on the
original.
When you open the project you'll probably receive lots of warnings.
Don't Panic!
When clicking on the "Validate Project Settings" warning xCode will suggest to convert your
project for you. I've done this for 3 iOs applications (Build Target:
4.3) now and it worked every single time. Let it create a snapshot for you. Just in case.
If your app has already been code signed you'll probably receive the
"Target Integrity" warning. In every single case it worked for me to
edit the path for the "entitlement.plist". (Just click the warning
and edit the path at "Code Signing Entitlements")
It may happen that you've to change the deployment-target. To do so
go to the Project Navigator (cmd + 1), click on your
project's name and then Summary. There you can edit your
Deployment Target.
If you get warnings on deprecated methods you should search
stackoverflow.com for your particular case. If it has to do with
NSURLConnection look here.
To be continued...
So I did something really stupid... I got a new MBP, and gave my old one to a friend. Before I did that, I transferred all of the contents of my big folders (Documents, Downloads, etc...) to my new Mac, and then I deleted the user on my old Mac. Unfortunately, I neglected to transfer the folder that contained the entire Xcode Project for my app that is currently on the App Store, as it wasn't in one of those folders, and I'm the only one who had it. The only way of being able to retrieve it that I thought of was that since I had to upload the binary to iTunes Connect to submit the app, Apple might still have it. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to completely start from scratch if I ever want to update it again. I just contacted Apple via iTunes Connect, but I was wondering if anyone has any idea of what I am able to do now, mainly, if Apple will actually give me all the files back. Thanks.
Any chance you've got a backup via timemachine?
Timemachine can't help you in the case of a fire (see http://github.com for what you can do about fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, or thieves), but maybe it can save your bacon right now. :)
Yeah, you pretty much lost it. I'd recommend looking at some source control - for example Github. It's built into XCode, and Github is pretty cheap for Private Repositories, and free for public ones.
You (nor Apple) won't be able to retrieve it from the binary.
No revision control system?!
You wiped your data or only simply deleted?
Because, here is a possibility retrieve data from the HDD (or at least some parts) when only simply deleted them. Delete usually does not wipe the data.
If you can get your old HDD, you should:
- insert it into external usb-HDD enclosure
- attach to your new MAC
- make an image from it to one big file (with the command "dd") (assuming than your new HDD is bigger than your old)
- and with several tools you can "try" recover some data
every use of the old HDD drastically lowering the chance recovering something from it.