iphone app upgrade and moved xibs/nibs leads to stale resources

Question

I have an unlocalized shipping app which has foo.xib in the main project directory. In preparation for localization, I moved this to en.lproj/foo.xib. Now, when I build my app and install on my test device, it ends up using the stale old foo.nib which must be there from before (the installation process must not remove old files in the app's bundle). Deleting the app from the test device and re-installing fixes it -- but I don't want my existing customers to have to do that.

Some of these are coming from calls to UIViewController's -initWithNibName:bundle method (to which I'm currently passing nil for the nibBundle). I can probably create an NSBundle instance here which points at the correct localized directory. The others are specified in Info.plist or in the "NIB Name" section in interface builder and I don't see a way to specify a bundle for those.

It might just be easier to rename all my xibs to (e.g.) en.lproj/newfoo.xib, then I presume it will find the correct nib at runtime. (And I'll have to remember to never again use the old "foo.xib" name in a new version.) Is there a more clever solution here though? (Other than going back in time and starting with en.lproj directories from the beginning ;-)

Thanks! -Mike

Answer 1

I just had the same issue but found a solution which works, even with Xcode's deployment quirkiness: Prevent UIViewController loading stale XIB from app bundle

Answer 2

Answering my own question in case anyone else runs into this issue. It appears that this is an artifact of the Xcode build-publish cycle, and it isn't a problem when user's upgrade via the App Store. I went ahead and published my update and no one has noticed problems that would result from stale resources.

As a speedup to development, it appears that Xcode only copies over resources that it detects have changed when you build and install to the simulator or a test device. (To prevent a game with 500MB of resources from having to be re-copied each and every time you build and test.) When you (re)move a resource from a project though, it does not detect this and (re)move the old copy. I will file a bug with Apple about it.

However, the App store does appear to do a clean install with each upgrade (copying over the user's documents directory) so this is not a problem from the App Store. I'm not sure if it is a problem when emailing beta testers an .ipa file or not.

Answer 3

I'm having the same issue. The problem is that the phone keeps a cache of the nibs. Somehow thus cache needs to be cleared for you to see the new localized nibs. I also don't want my users to have to delete the app since it stores data.