Whenever I try to submit my program, it gets rejected because it supposedly had a _MACOSX folder in it. This does not appear on my computer:



But it does on merthsoft's:



His guess was that my computer was "hiding it from me," but I don't know how to fix this. I use a Macbook Air, and I compressed the files by selecting them, going to File, selecting "Compress 5 Items," and then changing the name of the zip from "Archive" to "CalcFish."

OS X hides any file with a period before the name, such as .DS_store. It also hides other folders like _MACOSX.

I run OS X as well and have enabled Finder to display hidden files and folders. To do this on your computer, open a Terminal window and paste the following then press enter. You'll need to relaunch Finder for the changes to take affect (Apple Logo > Force Quit > Finder.)

Code:

(you may need admin/root privileges to do this. So if you are not the administrator on the computer talk to someone who is to do it)

I haven't seen any _MACOSX folders on my computer in a long time though. What OS are you running? (El Capitan here)

They mostly only appear in archives because the archive format has no sense of what a resource fork is so finder just shoves extra forks in that directory. See also, SuperUser.

A commenter on the above link suggests a pretty easy solution to remove that directory from an existing archive (in your terminal):
Code:
You can also use the associated unzip tool to list the archive contents which should bypass finder's dirty tricks:
Code:

I am running El Capitan. When I ran comicIDIOT's code, all of the .DS_store files were shown but no _MACOSX showed up in the zip archive. When I did Tari's code, It said that there was nothing to do (the _MACOSX folder was not it it). It seems as if the problem has fixed itself.

Nope, it's still there. I've accepted it because I got tired of rejecting it.

Ugh, sorry about all the trouble. Do you think it's the screenshots or something? They (apart from the zip file containing a folder) are the only difference between CalcFish and the other three I have submitted (the others did't have screenshots).

Probably. See below.

I went ahead and fixed it in the archives.
Code:

Thank you so much. Is there any surefire way to avoid this problem in the future or for me to remove the annoying files myself so other people don't have to bother with it?

You could try using other methods to zip up your programs. Put them in a folder and use a zipper utility from the App Store. Or, try having OS X compress the files in a folder. I don't know where or how MACOSX folders are being created in the process but, you said you select the files, right click then select "Compress X Files." Try putting them in a folder first and compress the folder. Maybe it'll work?

However, using a third-party compression tool off the Mac App Store is probably the most ideal solution.

Alright. I won't know if it works until I submit another program seeing as they still won't show up on my computer, but I'll try it. Thanks for the help everybody!

Further proof that Apple doesn't really understand how/why users want to actually use a computer.

I just updated my program Slots (added a screenshot) and I put the files in a folder and compressed it. No _MACOSX! Thank you so much everyone!

EDIT: Never mind, there are 6 _MACOSX folders. Shoot.

Nope, there was a folder.

Can someone delete them like before maybe? I will soon get a third party app to do it instead of Finder. Sorry.

We're going to (read: I'm gonna beg Tari until he does it) set up an automated process to remove these types of files from the archives so that we don't have to worry about these sorts of things in the future. Don't worry, you're not the only one

Just deployed an addition to the archives scripts that will automatically remove __MACOSX directories, .DS_Store, desktop.ini and thumbs.db files from uploads. Should fix your problem.

The _MACOSX folder and .DSStore items seem to be created when you create the folder through some normal means, like Right-Click>New Folder, or Finder>File>New Folder. It also seems to create them at random points if they don't exist. To be honest, I can't seem to find a straight answer as to why they exist.

I have had moderate success with using Terminal to create, populate, and zip the file.


Code:


As this method may get a bit tedious, and I'm not sure if cemetech allows archives of type tar.gz, I use the application "Keka". It compresses and decompresses just like OSX by default, but has options to delete those dumb OSX hidden files, as well as to set itself as the default program for similar operations.

Hooray! Thanks Tari

Only for things that are specifically Linux software. Things targeted at calculator or other OSes are expected to be in zip files.

Thanks indeed, Tari! This is very helpful, and should save both us and users time and hassle.

Should I re-upload the program? The folders are currently still in the .zip according to it's file page,

but assuming the addition to the archive scripts works I would expect them to go away when I redo the submision.