This morning I ran a project. It was fine. Then this afternoon and I got the exit 173 bug AGAIN: datetime appname[3785:75448] Failed to fetch the MacAppStore receipt. Alert: “appname” is damaged and can’t be opened. Delete “appname” and download it again from the App Store. Seriously this has been screwed up on and off for YEARS. I can't believe that Apple hasn't gotten this critical bug fixed and doesn't acknowledge it or provide a work-around. I guess I'll have to file a bug report again for the nth time but I don't know why since it never helped in the past. AAARRRGGG!

I was able to fix most of this by deleting the Constraints, checking "Show Title Bar", "Hide Title Text" and "Transparent Title Bar" in the Panel attributes and re adding constraints. There are still some weird things going on - for example in the Window's attributes in the right pane its type is NSPanel but in the pane on the left, Interface Builder thinks it's an NSWindow. Maybe the file is corrupted. Apple is now almost requiring Constraints and or resizing sub-views. This is a case of severe over-kill. Lots of complexity where is's not generally needed.

I figured out how to bring up the assistant editor and connect the NSButton to my source code that way. After I drag the button to the File's owner's implementation, XCode asks me to name the NSButton *. I do this. After this I can connect the NSButton * to the action I want - stopModalDialog. BUT the button is not highlighted and even though it's attributes are set to active, etc. it isn't highlighted and it won't respond to the message [theButton highlight: YES]; Also I'm getting all kinds of error messages from Interface builder like "Auto Layout Localization Localization - Views without layout constraints may clip their content or overlap other views." and "Incorrect Intrinsic size - NSTextField's height does not match its intrinsic content size use "Size to Fit Content" to correct" I can add Constraints to this Panel and this will suppress these errors but it will move the UI objects, resize the window or add autoresizing. I don't need any of this and it's a real hassle to deal with it.

I did a lot more work on this and I found: In my panel controller I have four IBOutlets declared like this: @implementation myAlertController { IBOutlet NSPanel *myAlertPanel; IBOutlet NSTextField *errorTypeField; IBOutlet NSTextField *messageField; IBOutlet NSButton *oKButton; } The File's Owner is correctly set to the panel controller. The problem is that Interface Builder only recognizes some of the IBOutlets. It knows that the NSPanel is an IBOutlet but even though the controller correctly sets the text in the two NSTextFields it shows an error that the File's owner doesn't have these outlets. Finally it doesn't recognize the NSButton. Even though the button sends the correct message to the controller I can't connect the outlet to it because Interface doesn't recognize the fact that it exists. I've tried everything I can think of to fix this like cleaning and rebuilding, removing and reinserting the text fields, etc. but it won't work. The application I'm working on has a lot of similar controllers and they work. It looks to me like this is another huge bug in XCode Interface Builder.

This is working on 12.2.

This is fixed in macOS 12.2. The first time I built and ran my app it exited. But when I launched it again there was a test receipt in the app bundle. It didn't ask for my test user ID and password like it used to. I was logged on to the App Store with these so it looks like it will add the receipt without asking for these credentials.

The many developers that have reported this to Bug Reporter have had their reports updated with "Resolution: Potential fix identified - In macOS 12.2" "Potential" doesn't sound very reassuring. If anyone is using the beta of 12.2 it would be interesting to see if it works.

Today I upgraded to XCode 13.2.1. THIS PROBLEM IS NOT FIXED. It seems likely that this is a problem with the server at the App Store.

I upgraded to macOS 12.1. This does not include a new version of App Store and it DOES NOT FIX THE EXIT 173 BUG.

I upgraded to macOS 12.1. This does not include a new version of App Store and it DOES NOT FIX THE EXIT 173 BUG.

This is still broken TWO YEARS LATER.

I got it - putting a file named "PkgInfo" with the text "BNDLhbwr" in my appname.help/Contents folder turns the .help folder into a package. This is interesting but it doesn't fix the no help book bug. The help Book will only be displayed if the app bundle is in the Applications folder. Also as far as I can tell this is an undocumented "feature" of macOS Monterey 12.0.1.

Is a Pkginfo file just a file with the ".Pkginfo" file extension? Is this documented anywhere?

Apple broke this and everyone is having the same problem. There are many threads about this.

Everybody has this same problem. It's also known as the exit(173) bug. Apple broke something and you can't get a receipt by logging on with your sandbox test user ID. Search the forums for 173.