I am developing an iOS (5.0+) app, which works very fine on 6 different devices in our company.
When we send the build to the customer, they report they have tested it on 5 different devices and the app is always crashing right after launch.
I have integrated TestFlight and Flurry SDKs to track usage and problems.
The strange thing is that no crashes are reported from both TestFlight and Flurry.
I have adviced the customer to remove the provisioning profiles and try to install everything from scratch, which did not produce different results.
The app is in the App Store, approved from the first try.
It is even stranger that the customer reports crashing when installing a TestFlight build and installing from the App Store.
Is the app going to be approved in the App Store if it crashes right after launch?
Any ideas on how to remotely debug the app or how to proceed in this case?
Thanks and happy holidays!
One option is to ensure your logging and get the crash logs. This Apple documentation shows how to get the logs both with and without Xcode available:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1747/_index.html
After you get the logs, here's documentation on how to read and analyze:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#technotes/tn2151/_index.html
The problem has been resolved by adding both German and English localization to the project settings and having 2 storyboards for each language. Big up #RoboticCat!
I've just distributed my iPhone app to a couple of beta-testers using Ad Hoc distribution and TestFlight. After the install the app crashes twice after opening then afterwards works absolutely fine.
Is there some sort of general reason behind this? Would this cause a rejection from App Store submission? Do you think this is an important glitch that should definitely be adressed or is it no biggie?
I don't know what your app is doing, but maybe some initialization steps which depend on each other are through after the second crash so the app runs fine.
And yes Apple won't like this. Apps crashing on startup are not good, even if they run on third launch.
My application crashes when freely running it on a real device or in the simulator. When I'm running it with XCode attached, the app works fine.
The app doesn't give me any errors and since I'm not running it with XCode attached, there is no message sent to the logger.
Any idea of what could be wrong or how I could find out what causes this crash?
Thanks!
You can read about CFRelease in detail in the following thread
Cheers
If you just want to test in a device why don't you try through iTunes. Find the Target of your project in the Finder, then drag it to iTunes. You can then sync the applications. This is not a solution but an alternative to run the app on your device.
Thanks Aditya,
The crash logs in the Organizer are actually very well detailed and they even include the line of code in the implementation file where the app crashed. When going to that line of code it seemed that I was CFRelease -ing a ABRecordRef, which is an integer of some kind...therefore I shouldn't release it
The weird thing is that it didn't crash or complain while debugging, but when running it on the device it did.
After submitting our application several times, we continue to receive the following response:
Thank you for submitting My App to the
App Store. We've reviewed your
application and determined that we
cannot post this version of your iPad
application to the App Store because
My App is crashing on iPad running
iPhone OS 3.2 and Mac OS X 10.6.2. My
App crashes upon launch.
Unfortunately, crash logs have not
been generated.
However, resigning the same build with the AdHoc entitlements and loading the build onto the device yields no such crash. After a number of attempts, the application simply does not crash as reported by the reviewer. Furthermore, the reviewer does not provide any useful logging that may have been generated by SpringBoard such as an exit status or event if it had worked properly for any other device. There are no calls to explicitly exit or quit the application in the code line and yet the application terminates on startup.
What might cause an application to terminate in such a manner?
Under what conditions is an application tested that might not be found under a development environment?
Could it be a result of a signing issue that the submission validation system is simply unable to catch?
Thanks in advance.
After fighting with this for weeks, the application has finally been approved. The key: signing corruption. Hence why the application would start (or at least appear to start by showing the splash screen) and then suddenly vanish without a crash log. It failed Springboard's preflight sighing check.
A good tool to keep in mind to check for signing issues. It tells if the application has a valid signing:
codesign -vvvv MyApp.app
When I built the application, I would cp it to a network storage device where our product manager would pull it down and submit it to Apple. If decompressed on the NAS, the code signing was valid. But if you coped the compressed application back off the NAS and validate it, it would fail.
The lesson: make use of the new XCode utility to submit applications.
A few suggestions:
Try to use the leaks tool of the static analyzer to see if there are any memory leaks or problems your not seeing.
Does your app use a web service? This happened to me one time because the day Apple was reviewing the app the web service went down. That cause a crash. If thats the case you would want to add something to catch that.
Finally, In the logs Apple sent you did they send you the dsym file? If they did you can run atos from the command line and it will convert the address to symbols. That will show you what thread and symbol it's crashing on.
Be sure you test with a variety of settings: with Wifi disabled/enabled, with 3G disabled, Airplane mode on/off, location services disabled, etc.
As a last resort, assume there is a problem in your code that executes at startup. Remove half your startup code, set your release date in the far future (just in case it gets approved), then resubmit and see if they have the same problem. If not the problem is in the half you removed... it's a binary search.
I think you have two options: try harder to reproduce the defect using the tools other people are mentioning or to catch those crashes in the field.
PLCrashReporter will trap on an uncaught exception and store all relevant information. Next time your app is run, it can send the crash report that you can then symbolificate and view a stack trace of.
Ouch! That's a tough one. I've had this kind of thing happen before, but it seemed it was reproduce-able when I switched to a different device (iPhone 3G vs 3Gs, etc.). In your case though, it sounds like you're iPad only, so that might not help. There's a difference between 3G and Wifi, I suppose, but I would be really surprised if that was causing a crash on one and not the other.
One thing you could try if you think Apple's not doing their part is to change the binary name and re-submit it under another app name/record. See if you get the same response. If you get the same reviewer, you might, but I think there's a good chance you would get a different reviewer with a new app. Just set your app release date to some time in the distant future and it will never actually show up in the app store if they approve it. If the new app comes back rejected for the same reason, you've got work to do, but if they do in fact approve it, then I would get on the phone with them and point out the discrepancy.
My approach would be to make sure that the compilation is absolutely clean both in the static analyzer (this is NOT optional, it will save you time!) and for the build itself. Then set everything as described on CocoaDev' NSZombie page. Then make sure you have an iPod running 3.2 (actual hardware, not simulator) and test, test, test. Do it with network available and not available, with the device nearly full and freshly restored, every other variation you can think of. Run it with the debugger active and as a release build disconnected. Use Leaks, Instruments and all the other tools to peek in there and get a better feel for what is happening. If you exhaust every possibility you are going to have to beg for more detail from Apple but I bet you find a problem - one of the most important things in debugging an issue like this is to try to forget everything you think you know for sure and start at the beginning.
When I try to debug my app on the iphone device, the splash screen shows and then the app crashes immediately. If I run the app in the simulator or on the device (not from XCode) it runs fine. I tried putting a breakpoint in the main method and it doesn't seem to hit it. There are no logs generated. ideas? suggestions?
Are you using a Apple Developer account or have you hacked the phone to develop on it? If its hacked, that is probably the problem. There is extra data being passed to the device because of the hack causing it to crash. Not sure if there is an easy work around except paying for a developer account.