Appium is not installing app: instruments crash on startup

Issues/Bugs
1

If the app is already installed, I can run my tests fine, but if its not, i got the message that instruments crashed on startup and it fails.

here is part of the log

[debug] [Instruments] Attempting to launch instruments, this is try #4
[Instruments] Launching instruments
[debug] [Instruments] Attempting to run app on real device with UDID 'DEVICE UDID HERE'
[debug] [Instruments] Found Insruments-Without-Delay: /usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/appium-ios-driver/node_modules/appium-instruments/thirdparty/iwd7
[debug] [Instruments] Spawning instruments with command: '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/instruments -t /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Instruments.app/Contents/PlugIns/AutomationInstrument.xrplugin/Contents/Resources/Automation.tracetemplate -D /var/folders/k0/s803_jl52hvggnvg9sbdbbf00000gn/T/appium-instruments/instrumentscli0.trace -w _<DEVICE UDID HERE>_ cheats.ipa -e UIASCRIPT "/Users/julia/Library/Application Support/appium/bootstrap/bootstrap-5a5c47a2bee114f6.js" -e UIARESULTSPATH /var/folders/k0/s803_jl52hvggnvg9sbdbbf00000gn/T/appium-instruments'
[debug] [Instruments] And extra without-delay env: {}
[debug] [Instruments] And launch timeouts (in ms): {"global":1000000}
[debug] [Instruments] [INST STDERR] Instruments Usage Error: Specified target process is invalid: cheats.ipa
[debug] [Instruments] [INST STDERR] instruments, version 7.3 (60134)
usage: instruments [-t template] [-D document] [-l timeLimit] [-i #] [-w device] [[-p pid] | [application [-e variable value] [argument ...]]]
[debug] [Instruments] Instruments exited with code 255
[Instruments] Error launching instruments: Instruments crashed on startup

Xcode version 7.3.1
Appium version 1.5.2
tried on real devices, ios 7.x and 9.x

OBS: One thing I notice is that even when the app is installed, i see the appium log message that app is not installed, will install. Apparently it doesn’t install, but the tests runs fine

2

Could it be that you need to supply the path to ‘cheats.ipa’?

3

its because I put it on same path I run the tests, just to exclude that kind of problem

4

when I run that command, it shows me this error:

Instruments Trace Error : Target failed to run: The operation couldn’t be completed. (FBSOpenApplicationErrorDomain error 4.) : Failed to launch process with bundle identifier 'cheats.ipa'

it looks like it is only trying to run the app, not install, what am I missing here? here is my capabilities:

platformName: 'iOS',
    versionNumber: '9.3',
    deviceName: get_device_name,
    app: APP_PATH,
    backendRetries: 1,
    nativeInstrumentsLib: false,
    launchTimeout: 1000000,
    waitForAppScript: "true",
    autoAcceptAlerts: true,
    newCommandTimeout: 12000,
    udid: get_udid
5

ok so googleing it i found this, updated appium and now it works… too bad it took me a workday to find this out it was an appium bug

ps: i could only update appium running the command to install it again (using npm)

6

last info: after the update, appium was installing but not launching, i fixed it adding --pre-launch tag to start appium