Crash on first launch of sandboxed app

Question

I just changed my sandboxed app's bundle identifier, and ran it. I get a runtime exception before main() even runs. The top of the stack trace is runtime_init. I tried running the app outside of Xcode and got the standard crash report dialog. Scrolling through the information presented, I noticed:

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, running initializers
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
xpchelper reply message validation: sandbox creation failed: 1002
Container object initialization failed: The operation couldn’t be completed. (Cocoa error 13.)

As soon as I run another time, there's no problem. I see that the container exists. As soon as I remove the container, though, the exception gets thrown again. I don't want my users' first experience with my app to be a crash. How can I fix this?

I tried repairing permissions, which made no difference. I also noticed that by the time Xcode breaks on the exception, the container has already been created. Also, Craig Hockenberry mentioned this error in a blog post, but he blamed symlinks in the user's Home directory. I don't have any symlinks there (not in the top level, at least, which is what I assume he means).

Additional input on Twitter suggests that it can be a symlink anywhere, in which case I definitely do have some. Has anyone discovered a workaround for it? I suppose that would be tough, as no application code executes before the exception. Hopefully Mountain Lion will fix it...?

Answer 1

Finally solved this crash by removing everything from the Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Movies, and Pictures user directories. I assume it's related to the sym link issue mentioned in other threads.