Unreal Editor crashes when opening files in OS X

When running either 4.6 or 4.7 versions of Editor in OSX 10.9, I am unable to open files.

This issue is not present in previous versions of engine. Any command that results in opening a Finder window to select a file will crash my editor.

In 4.6, crash occurs as soon as window opens.

In 4.7, problem is more complex. Under certain circumstances, it will crash, but under rest it simply hangs indefinitely. I have not been able to pinpoint which steps cause what behavior.

These are quickest steps to reproduce problem:

  1. Launch Unreal Editor from Epic Launcher
  2. When Project Browser window appears, click ‘Browse…’
  3. In resulting Finder window, do one of following:
  • Expand a directory
  • Collapse a directory
  • Select a location from sidebar

In Unreal Editor 4.6, crash occurs on step 2.

In Unreal Editor 4.7, crash occurs in step 3.

system tends to crash when expanding a directory, but is more likely to hang when collapsing one.

It is possible to open a project file if it appears in open directory.

It is also sometimes possible to select folders from sidebar. For example, I tried to access my downloads folder.
first attempt resulted in a crash. Every subsequent attempt has worked, but it still fails to expand or collapse directories inside downloads folder.

Each time editor is reloaded, it retains state following action that caused crash. This means that, given window above, when I collapse ‘Source’ directory, editor crashes. When I reopen it, it shows me following folder structure:

This tells me that at some level editor manages to access folder, but something goes wrong when it tries to read contents. crashes don’t seem to have same root cause every time, but they generally are either a null pointer exception or a memory access violation.

Here is my most recent crash log: [UE4CrashReport - Pastebin.com][3]

Again, this issue was not present prior to 4.6. Did something major change in Mac builds at that time? I notice that compiler uses Mac SDK 10.10 for builds. I don’t believe SDK is bound to a specific OS version, but has OSX Yosemite been made a requirement now? If so, why? If not, is there a workaround?

Hi certifiedDoc,

I don’t believe we test on anything prior to 10.10.1 anymore, but I don’t think it’s required yet. Which OS version are you on, specifically?

Whoops, nevermind, I see 10.9.5 in your crash log. While I look into this, is there a reason you can’t or won’t move to 10.10? Thanks!

I am intending to update in next few months, but I tend to wait because I use a fair amount of older software that doesn’t get updated regularly.
I’d also like to make sure games I develop are compatible with at least two latest versions of OSX.

That being said, if there isn’t an obvious answer I can go ahead and update.

I double checked with our developers, and we still support 10.9.5. I’m going to run a quick test on a 10.9.5 machine here. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Hi certifiedDoc,

I checked this in 4.7.2 on a 10.9.5 system, and was able to reproduce a crash by expanding a folder in Finder. I’ve written up a bug report for issue (UE-11965), and I’ll let you know when I see any update on it. I unfortunately do not have a timeline for a fix quite yet. I can confirm that this is a problem with newer engine versions on 10.9.5, and upgrading to 10.10 should solve issue for you. Thanks for your report!

Thank you. I’ve done some looking, but is there a place I can go to follow this issue? I can’t seem to find information on what Epic uses for issue tracking.

Our bug tracking is not currently public, though that is something we’re considering for near future. For now, we post bug report numbers so we can easily reference them in future. best I can do now is to post here as soon as I see any update on bug.

We don’t have a fix yet, but we’re looking into this. In a meantime you should be able work around this issue (or at least decrease chance for a crash) by changing view in Open Project dialog to Icons or Columns.

Thanks. workaround seems to be working.

Hi again,

Just wanted to let you know that this has been fixed in 4.8. You should no longer have this problem in 4.8 Preview or future versions when running on 10.9.5. Thanks again!