Thanks for the response.
I’ve determined that my problem doesn’t seem to be related to what’s discussed above, but the ._ files created by MacOS on some disks depending on formatting. When UE encounters one it crashes.
I eventually found this forum post from 2016 where a problem with these files existed, though then it seemed to be mostly failing in the build process whereas I experienced constant editor crashing (until my workaround described below), including in a newly-created project.
It doesn’t say whether the problem was fully resolved then. If it was resolved then it would seem to be reoccurring.
My story: UE is installed on my system drive but I’m trying to put projects on an external drive formatted with exFAT, where (I now know) MacOS creates a hidden ._ file for extra file attributes in any file it encounters. There’s a command line utility to clean them (dot_clean) and I got into the habit of having a terminal open to run it periodically while working through “Your First Hour in UE 5.2.” Not convenient, but it worked. But packaging a project failed since that process creates ._ files constantly as it churns through the project’s files, and my attempt to automatically rerun the dot_clean command wasn’t fast enough to catch them in time. I copied the project folder to the system drive and it packaged correctly since that drive is APFS and ._ files are not necessary.
So was this resolved back then but it’s come back somehow? And why isn’t UE ignoring these rather irrelevant files anyway?
I jumped in with my 2020 MBAir because of the Apple Silicon support in 5.2. Other than this issue it’s been running fairly smooth. And, all things considered, quite fun.
If the answer is “only use APFS formatted drives” that should probably be noted somewhere. The majority of external drives one might easily pick up are not APFS but work just fine on a Mac.