Problems installing ArcGIS on macOS

[Peter_]

Hi,

I am new to ArcGIS and just want to share my experiences with the installation of the ArcGIS Maps SDK for Qt on macOS.

I could not find an older post that fits, however, if I missed one, I am sorry for a duplicate.

Specs

• macOS 14.3.1
• Xcode 15.2
• Qt commercial license 6.5.5
• Qt Creator 13.0.0

I hope I did not miss anything.

I already had an installation of Qt which works with no problems.

The installation of the ArcGIS SDK version 200.4.0 (downloaded from the corresponding ArcGIS page) did not include the project templates into the existing installation of Qt. I also tried to run the post-installer script manually as sudo in terminal, but with no success. I did not get any error messages, too.

However, version 200.3.0 installed successfully and included the project templates as expected.

[JamesBallard1]

Hi @Peter_. 

All the specs look good. Here are a few things you can check.

The post installer script will write to $TMPDIR/postInstall.log. If you open that up, do you see any problems? It should be logging every action it does along with the success/failure.

Our project templates get installed into ~/.config/QtProject/qtcreator/templates/wizards on macOS. Can you check that location to see if they are actually there?

Another quirk we run into is that Qt Creator does not pick up new templates on the fly. If Qt Creator was open the whole time, it won't see the new templates until you restart it.

[Peter_]

Hi @JamesBallard1 .

Thank you for your answer.

I uninstalled version 200.3.0 and installed version 200.4.0 again to check the two locations you mentioned, right after the attempt to install 200.4.0.

Before the uninstall of 200.3.0 and install of 200.4.0 I checked postinstall.log and the templates directory.

postinstall.log contained the following message:

Could not locate Qt Creator templates folder at ~/.config/QtProject/qtcreator/templates/wizards

The templates dir ~/.config/QtProject/qtcreator/templates/wizards existed but contained only the templates for 200.3.0.

I guess the postinstall.log was from the attempt to install 200.4.0 days ago.

However, after I installed 200.4.0 again, the templates for 200.4.0 showed up in Qt Creator...

If Qt Creator was open the whole time, it won't see the new templates until you restart it.

I had all other programs closed during installation, including Qt Creator.

I am not sure if the templates directory is created during the install of Qt Creator or by the ArcGIS post-install script. For the latter, is it possible that the script for 200.4.0 does not create the templates folder as expected? I just realized, that the post-install process for 200.3.0 is kind of separate from the main installer, after confirmation of the dialog (attached). At least this would explain, why I could successfully install 200.4.0 after 200.3.0.

Thank you again!

Peter

[JamesBallard1 · Accepted solution]

@Peter_ , you are correct that our post installer changed at version 200.4.0. Starting with 200.4.0 it's now a script and will log to $TMPDIR/postInstall.log. The previous version was an application that was invoked by our setup and did not write a log to that location.

The script will not create the ${HOME}/.config/QtProject/qtcreator/templates/wizards if it doesn't already exist. We could consider adding that, but it's unclear what might happen if Qt Creator is installed after that point. It may overwrite this location and the templates could be lost.

Our script logic is that if ${HOME}/.config/QtProject/qtcreator/templates/wizards does not exist, we assume Qt Creator is not installed and we should not install templates. If this happens, we log the "Could not locate Qt Creator templates folder at..." message you saw above.

Sounds like everything is working now. If you think that logic is incorrect, let us know and we can see if it makes sense to update it. It's possible we've made some bad assumptions.

[Peter_]

I just checked ${HOME}/.config/QtProject/qtcreator in TimeMachine, at the time before I had run the installer (200.4.0) the first time, and the templates directory did not exist.

However, somehow the directory shows up after one of the runs of the installers (200.4.0 or 200.3.0, I cant resolve that with time machine). I followed the "Install and set up instructions" and only needed to add some of the "additional libraries" with Qt Maintenance tool (some of them were already installed).

Sounds like everything is working now. If you think that logic is incorrect, let us know and we can see if it makes sense to update it. It's possible we've made some bad assumptions.

Yes, everything is working. I'll mark your last comment as solution, since the absence of the templates directory has nothing to do with the ArcGIS SDK.

Maybe it will be safe, if the script only creates the templates/wizards directory, iff ${HOME}/.config/QtProject/qtcreator exists? This would not conflict with a later, in this case re- installation of Qt Creator. According to Qt Creator documentation, the templates/wizards directory should be there anyway. On the other hand, I am working with Qt for years now, my Qt installation got several updates/upgrades of Qt and Qt Creator, so I think it will be hard, if not impossible, to figure out when or why the templates directory got lost. And the ArcGIS-Maps-SDK-post-install-script is definitively bot the one responsible to fix this 😉

I am curious if the templates/wizards will be recreated after adding some of the libraries, and then restarting Qt Creator. If I find an answer to this, I will post it.

Thanks again for your help!