Devs: Getting Trouble Data from Users

I spent some time yesterday improving our Trouble Zipper AppleScript package.  It now finds crash reports generated by Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8.  (Apparently, we haven't needed to look at many crash reports since 10.7!)  Also, using a new Perl script in the package (filterConsoleLogs.pl), the filtering of console log entries for those written only by a target app now gets all lines of multi-line entries.

The AppleScript source, and other useful scripts and tools in the package, are all open for any other interested developers to dig in to.  Unfortunately, if your app is sandboxed, you may not be able to allow your users to download and run such a Trouble Zipper from the Help menu in your app, as BookMacster does.  But if you can figure out a way to deliver it to your users, you might want to download Trouble Zipper, tear it apart, and use whatever you like.

Oh, but, Apple gave us one more annoying surprise in Mountain Lion.  The applet executable in Trouble Zipper's Contents/MacOS/ subdirectory is a triple-fat binary: x86_64, i386, and ppc.  AppleScript Editor in Mountain Lion will not open it, apparently because it does not like the PowerPC (ppc) architecture in the applet.  And in characteristic Apple oversimplified style, the error dialog simply says that the script cannot be opened.  If you don't need to support any more PowerPC users, you can fix this problem by swapping in the applet from any other AppleScript application package you have.  Or, you can work around it by opening Contents/Resources/Scripts/main.scpt inside the package, instead of the package itself, and editing that.  AppleScript Editor will occasionally give you some crap about not being able to save the file because another app has modified it.  Just click Save Anyway.  Also, before testing or shipping, you'll need to manually click Compile before Save.