iOS distribution packaging on UE 5.8.0 (modern Xcode) fails to copy the staged cooked data into the .app during the xcodebuild archive step

[Ted.steen]

Summary

This was confirmed by the community to be a bug in Unreal Engine 5.8

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I have an install/archive problem on macOS. It seems like there is a bug in UE 5.8 when doing BuildCookRun with `-archive`. UE’s engine-generated run-script “Copy Executable and Staged Data into .app” copies into $CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR/My.app. During a normal build that’s the real bundle, so it works. But an archive is an install action (ACTION=install, DEPLOYMENT_LOCATION=YES), where Xcode assembles the real bundle in $TARGET_BUILD_DIR (…/InstallationBuildProductsLocation/Applications/My.app…

A summary would look something like this:
iOS distribution packaging on UE 5.8.0 (modern Xcode) fails to copy the staged cooked data into the .app during the xcodebuild archive step. The engine-generated “Copy Executable and Staged Data into .app” build phase errors with cp: .app: Not a directory, producing a malformed/empty .xcarchive — yet AutomationTool still exits 0, so the failure is silent and the exported IPA ships without its cooked content.

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Other

Steps to Reproduce

Build a 5.8 project with -distribution on macOS (apple silicon is what I used) for iOS.

Expected Result

The build phase copies Saved/StagedBuilds/IOS/cookeddata/ into .app/cookeddata/, the .xcarchive is well-formed, and xcodebuild -exportArchive produces an IPA containing the cooked content.

Observed Result

• The phase fails with cp: /.app: Not a directory while copying uecommandline.txt / cookeddata into ${CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR}/${CONTENTS_FOLDER_PATH}.
• The archived .app ends up with no cooked data; the .xcarchive is malformed/incomplete.
• AutomationTool still exits 0, so CI sees a “successful” build. The exported IPA installs but is missing its staged content.

Affects Versions

5.8

Platform(s)

iOS
Mac