LiveCloud standalone issues...

[stamatis]

I had only included mergJSON with initial builds (as per the website). This seemed to fail, and resolved when i included the standard JSON library as well. Are both required or is this a coincidence?

CanelaDB does not need the standard JSON library to be included when making your standalone. I verified that LCM does not have it included. 

To ensure connectivity with liveCloud include the ‘canelaDB’ folder as an in the standalone settings ‘copy files’ section (ie should be available in specialFolderPath("resources"). On first run, this folder is copied to the user’s Documents folder (writeable location), along with he mainstack that is launched form the splash stack.
However when building a mac app, the locked libraries are causing the standalone build to fail with the error ‘cannot open output files’ or some such. I can work around this by removing the the CanelaDB folder from the ‘Copy Files’ section of the standalone settings, build the app and then manually copy this to <show app package contents>/Contents/Resources/_MacOS/
Is there a better way to do this?

This sounds like a LiveCode standalone builder bug. I'll give it a try and report back what I find. By chance, are you using the "Search for required inclusions when saving the standalone application" when building? LiveCode will not be able to read through encrypted files to see what is inside. They should fail nicely and continue to work in my opinion. Maybe it is not doing that gracefully.

On running a the same standalone on Mac and Windows, it works fine on Mac, but on Windows it crashes - after some head scratching it seems that the checksum library checks on Mac work fine but throw an error on Windows. I’ve worked around this by commenting out the checksum library checks - the app works beutifully and will be used in a very trusted environment so that’s fine, but it’s obviously not desirable otherwise.
Can multiple checksums be correct (ie should i have checksum that works for both mac and win, unlike the one i have now that only works for mac)? Or do i need to derive a Windows checksum and include a platform check in the library checks?

The checksums should work for both platforms. After all, LiveCloud Manager relies on identical checksums for both platforms. It uses the same libraries we output when you do an export toolkit. Is it possible you are not using the same libraries for both platforms? Maybe an older version is being used on the Windows side?

-Mark

Hi Mark,
Re point 1: Noted, thank you. Probably coincidence then.

Re point 2: I absolutely do not let LC search for required inclusions automatically (really my comment on point 1 should have cleared that up ). 
All inclusions are selected manually and I  ensured that the 4 listed on the website are included (Internet, SSL, mergJSON and tsNet). 

The reason i even tried to add the locked files manually *after* the build is that i saw a post somewhere describing difficulties with locked files in this respect. 

It should be noted however that the Windows build is uneventful - it's just building for Big Sur that causes this problem for me. It's fine, just seems inelegant. But if you are able to build for Big Sur and including a folder containing the CanelaDB folder in the 'copy files' section please do let me know. (Mac OS 11.5, LC 9.6.2).

Re point 3: I absolutely do use the same library files, there is no question there. I should note however that the checksums i used were derived by me, as at the time the checksums in the stack script provided in the 'export toolkit' screen were incorrect and i wonder if i somehow managed to create a monstrosity. I presume by now the issue with the stack script checksums has been corrected, so will use these now and see if that resolves the issue.

---- EDIT -----
I did go back and look at the checksums again; On Mac these but both CDB_Starter.lib and CDB_Header.lib pass the checksum test just fine.
On Windows, with identical lib files the check on CDB_Header.lib throws the error "Error, CDB_Header checksum did not match."
The checksums i derived are now identical to ones provided in stack script in the 'export toolkit' screen. 
When i get a chance I'll download the lib files again and see if replacing them makes any difference...

Many thanks as always,
Stam