App deletes itself when unzipped into /Applications as root

[gnachman]

A user filed this issue report against my app:

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11033

I am able to reproduce it. Here are the exact steps:

1. Download a zip file of my app (or any app that uses LetsMove) into ~/Downloads/app.zip.
2. In Terminal, cd /Applications; sudo unzip -x ~/Downloads/app.zip
3. Launch the app and agree to move it to /Applications.
4. You are left with an empty folder.

I added some logging and here's what's happening:

bundlePath is /private/var/folders/jk/2nklbh0x5ksc192jsm9nhnhc0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/F5172787-71B6-4B5D-A94D-E50E9670D998/d/iTerm2.app

IsInApplicationsFolder() returns false

destinationPath is /Applications/iTerm2.app

needAuthorziation is YES (destination folder exists and is not writable)

LetsMove attempts to trash /private/var/folders/jk/2nklbh0x5ksc192jsm9nhnhc0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/F5172787-71B6-4B5D-A94D-E50E9670D998/d/iTerm2.app next.

All the methods fail, ending with the following applescript error dictionary:

{
    NSAppleScriptErrorAppName = Finder;
    NSAppleScriptErrorBriefMessage = "Not authorized to send Apple events to Finder.";
    NSAppleScriptErrorMessage = "Not authorized to send Apple events to Finder.";
    NSAppleScriptErrorNumber = "-1743";
    NSAppleScriptErrorRange = "NSRange: {200, 39}";
}

But it succeeded enough to leave behind an empty folder.

% ls -laR /Applications/iTerm2.app/
total 0
0 drwxr-xr-x@   2 root  admin    64 Aug  6 10:57 ./
0 drwxrwxr-x  110 root  admin  3520 Aug  6 10:57 ../

I don't think it'll be possible to detect that /Applications/myapp is the same as the translocation folder (maybe inode numbers would match? But I wouldn't count on it). One possible fix would be to rename the destination, copy the app over, and then delete the renamed folder. That has the downside that a failed move would leave behind a randomly named folder in /Applications.

Maybe someone on the project will have a better idea. I'm happy to send a PR once we have a plan in place.