.xojo_project file replaced with binary project / Lost license file

Duane_Mitchell · February 26, 2021, 5:58pm

I use Fork for source code control and it no longer reads the .xojo_project file to show me the individual code changes. It treats it like a binary file. Could be because, for some reason, my license keys disappeared in Xojo on my desktop computer. Without license keys you can’t work with .xojo_project files.

I downloaded my license keys and added them back. Am I going to recover this file now or will I have to do something else. Maybe save it to binary and then back to .xojo_project and then recreate git setup.

I did not lose the license keys on my MacBook so I can see if I can download the latest version there.

Anthony_G_Cyphers · February 22, 2021, 1:26am

Had the same issue. Save as binary, overwrite text project. Backup everything first.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 1:31am

Are you saying save as binary to another folder and then save as xojo_project to yet another folder and then copy/overwrite to the original leaving to preserve the source code control status?

Anthony_G_Cyphers · February 22, 2021, 1:43am

I copied my entire git parent folder to create a current snapshot. I then opened my masquerading binary project from the copied directory and saved as text project in the original git parent directory.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 1:59am

Turns out I hosed this up pretty good in the time between the licenses disappearing and when I realized that was the problem. I’m just going to trash it and roll back to the last version that was good. Luckily it’s not a lot of work and I do save binary projects frequently enough.

Thanks for your help.

Bill_Gookin · February 22, 2021, 2:07am

Yes, if you lose your license, it will start saving in binary format without telling you. Your work is all in that binary file now.

JasonTait · February 22, 2021, 5:57am

This has been happening to me for a few months whenever there’s a macOS Big Sur update. I think I read somewhere that Xojo thinks you’re on a different device after these updates. So I’ve formed a habit after every Big Sur update of logging into my Xojo account, deleting my licence “instances”, then going into Xojo and requesting a new licence (Xojo menu → License Keys → Update). They’re going to have to sort this out as it will begin to bite too many users.

Lee_Badham · February 22, 2021, 1:32pm

This is very dangerous because it doesn’t tell you it’s saving as a binary file, but overwrites the .xojo_project file with the binary project. The only way to see is suddenly the xojo_project file is now several MB. I have to make sure I’m logged in and that the licences are present. Quite often the license is not added automatically from the account, so I’ve downloaded the .xojo_license file and apply that. Sometimes after that is asks to transfer the license (It’s the same computer, but updated) and I use the file.
Regards,

Lee

Beatrix_Willius · February 22, 2021, 1:47pm

Please file a bug report.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 2:22pm

The problem is that I had made some code changes and none of the changes were included in the save. I assume that’s because there’s no license.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 2:23pm

Yes but it didn’t save any of the changes I had made.

Anthony_G_Cyphers · February 22, 2021, 2:25pm

It should have saved them to the binary file. I definitely didn’t see any loss of changes. Once I re-saved the binary over the old project as text, everything was there and working. That’s really interesting and, obviously, unfortunate.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 2:29pm

I’m going to have to watch that. This isn’t the first time it’s happened to me but the first since Big Sur. Can’t say I’ve used Xojo that much so haven’t be aware of this issue.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 2:33pm

I caught this early because I use Fork for github. It wasn’t reading the project file detail and showed a warning in red saying something like “not LFS”. I knew something wasn’t right. Luckily I have a good backup system so I just restored the project.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 2:35pm

Yea, it should, shouldn’t it. Maybe I declined to save? Not sure. It all got hosed up quick.

Duane_Mitchell · February 22, 2021, 11:21pm

I filed a bug report.

Arnaud_N · February 23, 2021, 9:13am

Since several months (years?) now, when Xojo crashes, the ability of Xojo to recover unsaved changes is broken (in my experience, it now never works). I’d not be surprised to see unreliable behavior on saving.

Anthony_G_Cyphers · February 23, 2021, 10:22am

Except this isn’t about crashing and I worked along blissfully unaware for nearly three days without realizing and all of my work was saved.

Duane_Mitchell · February 26, 2021, 4:13pm

It did it again! Updated to Big Sur 11.2.2 this morning and the project file went binary. Son of a biscuit!

Duane_Mitchell · February 26, 2021, 5:14pm

This is turning into a horror show. What I did was I saved as binary into another folder. Opened that and converted to project file. Copied just the .xojo_project file back into the Git managed folder. Now it’s back to showing the project file as a single file.