Unable to open project cannot be opened because the project file cannot be parsed

Question

I have been working for a while to create an iPhone app   Today when my battery was low  I was working and constantly saving my source files then the power went out    Now when I plugged my computer back in and it is getting good power I try to open my project file and I get an error   Unable to Open Project Project     cannot be opened because the project file cannot be parsed   Is there a way that people know of that I can recover from this   I tried using an older project file and re inserting it and then compiling   It gives me a funky error which is probably because it isn t finding all the files it wants    I really don t want to rebuild my project from scratch if possible   EDIT Ok  I did a diff between this and a slightly older project file that worked and saw that there was some corruption in the file   After merging them  the good and newest parts  it is now working  Great points about the SVN   I have one  but there has been some funkiness trying to sync XCode with it   I ll definitely spend more time with it now     -

User · Answer

It sounds like you re going to have to create a new project in Xcode  go into the old directory  and drag all your source files  nibs  and resources into the Xcode files sidebar in the new project  It shouldn t take more than a few minutes  unless you really did a lot of work with custom build settings or targets  Either that  or revert to the last check-in in your source control and manually add any code files which changed between now and then

User · Answer

Just check the project pbproject file and do a diff against a working version of the project file   Often times this happens when you have conflicts from a version control system like posted here  User file cannot be parsed in subversion in MAC iphone SDK

User · Answer

Try to find HEAD and  HEAD between the lines and delete this words in project pbxproj  Backup this file before doing this

User · Answer

Analyse the syntax of your project file  Check it inside your project in terminal   plutil -lint project pbxproj  This will show you the errors from the parser   Possible problem  Some projects set git merging strategy union for project files  This works for most of the times  but will silently kill your project file if it fails  This strategy is defined in the  gitattributes file in your repository

User · Answer

Revert the project pbxproj  svn revert --filename--

User · Answer

Muhammad s answer was very helpful  and helped lead to my fix   However  simply removing the                  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  wasn t enough to fix the parse issue in the project pbxproj  for me  when keeping changes from both branches after a merge    I had a merge conflict in the PBXGroup section  whose beginning is indicated by a block comment like this     Begin PBXGroup section     of the project pbxproj file  However  the problem I encountered can occur in other places in the project pbxproj file as well   Below is a simplification of the merge conflict I encountered        lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  HEAD           id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name                         id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name        gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  branch name             sourceTree     lt group gt                   When i removed the merge conflict markers this is what I was left with             id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name             id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name               sourceTree     lt group gt                   Normally  removing the merge conflict markers would fix the parse issue in the project pbxproj file and restore the workspace integrity  This time it didn t   Below is what I did to solve the issue             id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name               sourceTree     lt group gt                            id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name               sourceTree     lt group gt                   I actually had to add 2 lines at the end of the first PBXGroup    You can see that if I would have chosen to discard the changes from either Head or the merging branch  there wouldn t have been a parse issue  However  in my case I wanted to keep both groups I added from each branch and simply removing the merge markers wasn t enough  I had to add extra lines to the project pbxproj file in order to maintain correct formatting   So  if you re running into parsing issues after you thought you d resolved all you re merge conflicts  you might want to take a closer look at the  pbxproj and make sure there aren t any formatting problems

User · Answer

Visual analysis of the Xcode project file did not help me to locate error after merging  After looking to syslog found such line when Xcode trying to parse the file   2 7 14 12 39 12 792 PM Xcode 9949   CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData    Old-style plist parser  missing semicolon in dictionary on line 4426  Parsing will be abandoned  Break on  CFPropertyListMissingSemicolon to debug    After fixing that project can be opened ok

User · Answer

I got this exact same error because Cordova will allow you to create a project with spaces in it  and Xcode doesn t know how to deal

User · Answer

By reverting  you can undo pulled code   If you want to undo that pull request just put this command on project path   --  git merge --abort

User · Answer

Visual analysis of the Xcode project file did not help me to locate error after merging  After looking to syslog found such line when Xcode trying to parse the file   2 7 14 12 39 12 792 PM Xcode 9949   CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData    Old-style plist parser  missing semicolon in dictionary on line 4426  Parsing will be abandoned  Break on  CFPropertyListMissingSemicolon to debug    After fixing that project can be opened ok

User · Answer

It sounds like you re going to have to create a new project in Xcode  go into the old directory  and drag all your source files  nibs  and resources into the Xcode files sidebar in the new project  It shouldn t take more than a few minutes  unless you really did a lot of work with custom build settings or targets  Either that  or revert to the last check-in in your source control and manually add any code files which changed between now and then

User · Answer

And once you get things working again you should look into using something like subversion or mercurial for backup and revision control  Remember that he electrons don t always go where they are supposed to  backup early and often

User · Answer

I had similar issue     Below are steps to resolve it    Navigate to folder where your projectName xcodeproj    Right click and select  Show Package Contents   You will be able to see list of files with  pbxproj extension    Select project pbxproj  Right click and open this file using  Text Edit     You will be able to see  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine                and  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r123  These are generally conflicts that arise when you take update from SVN  Delete these and save file      Now  you ll be able to open project without any error message

User · Answer

I faced the same problem recently when trying to merge my branch with a remote branch  However  none of the above solutions seemed appropriate to my problem    There were no merge conflicts between the project pbxproj file in my branch or the remote branch  However  my projectName xcodeproj file would refuse to open for the same reason as shown in the asked question   My solution was to look through the project pbxproj using a text editor and find if there were any irregularities in the file syntax  for e g  an extra curly bracket   I sped this process up by focusing on the lines which were inserted or deleted in old file as compared to the merged file  On closer examination  I found the cause of my problem was the repetition of the following line    xxxxxxxxxxxxx     CP  Check Pods Manifest lock          in my merged file  This led to an unclosed curly bracket and consequent invalid pbxproj syntax  Deleting the above line fixed my problem

User · Answer

If you ever merge and still get problems that dont know what they are  I mean not the obvious marks of a diff  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt               gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   Then you can analise your project files with https   github com Karumi Kin  install it and use it kin project pbxproj  It has make extrange erros that doesn t allow open the project more easy to understand and solve  ones of hashes  groups and so on    And by the way  this could also be helpful  thought I have not used it try to diff 2 versions of your project files https   github com bloomberg xcdiff so this will give you really what is going on

User · Answer

Steps to be followed - 1 Navigate to folder where your projectName xcodeproj 2 Right click and select  Show Package Contents   You will be able to see list of files with  pbxproj extension  3 Select project pbxproj  Right click and open this file using  Text Edit   4 You will be able to see  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt                and             These are generally conflicts that arise when you take update from Sourcetree SVN GITLAB  Delete these and save file  5 Now  you ll be able to open project without any error message

User · Answer

And once you get things working again you should look into using something like subversion or mercurial for backup and revision control  Remember that he electrons don t always go where they are supposed to  backup early and often

User · Answer

By reverting  you can undo pulled code   If you want to undo that pull request just put this command on project path   --  git merge --abort

User · Answer

I just ran into same problem  I removed generated strings by git as always but Xcode still refused to open  xcodeproj file  But everything was correct  no missing brackets etc  Finally I tried to quit Xcode and open project when Xcode was closed   then it worked  I hope this helps someone   EDIT   for resolving conflicts in your  xcodeproj file you can use this handy script    Create empty  sh file in your project directory   e g  resolve conflicts sh   Here is the script   projectfile find -d   -name  project pbxproj  projectdir echo   xcodeproj projectfile    projectdir  project pbxproj  tempfile    projectdir  project pbxproj out  savefile    projectdir  project pbxproj mergesave   cat  projectfile   grep -v   lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  HEAD    grep -v             grep -v                tempfile mv  tempfile  projectfile Run it from terminal using sh command  sh resolve conflicts sh

User · Answer

change your current project folder nam and checkout module the same project then add the current file changes

User · Answer

I came across this problem and my senior told me about a solution i e   Right click on your projectname xcodeproj file here projectname will be the name of your project  Now after right clicked select Show Packages Contents  After that open your projectname pbxproj file in a text editor  Now search for the line containing  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine          and  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r  For example in my case it looked liked this    lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine       9ADAAC6A15DCEF6A0019ACA8      in Resources                   52FD7F3D15DCEAEF009E9322     in Resources      gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r269   Now remove those  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine          and  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r lines so it would look like this         9ADAAC6A15DCEF6A0019ACA8    BuyPriceBtn png in Resources            52FD7F3D15DCEAEF009E9322    discussionForm zip in Resources       Now save and open your Xcode project and build it  Everything will be fine

User · Answer

I got this exact same error because Cordova will allow you to create a project with spaces in it  and Xcode doesn t know how to deal

User · Answer

Muhammad s answer was very helpful  and helped lead to my fix   However  simply removing the                  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  wasn t enough to fix the parse issue in the project pbxproj  for me  when keeping changes from both branches after a merge    I had a merge conflict in the PBXGroup section  whose beginning is indicated by a block comment like this     Begin PBXGroup section     of the project pbxproj file  However  the problem I encountered can occur in other places in the project pbxproj file as well   Below is a simplification of the merge conflict I encountered        lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  HEAD           id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name                         id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name        gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  branch name             sourceTree     lt group gt                   When i removed the merge conflict markers this is what I was left with             id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name             id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name               sourceTree     lt group gt                   Normally  removing the merge conflict markers would fix the parse issue in the project pbxproj file and restore the workspace integrity  This time it didn t   Below is what I did to solve the issue             id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name               sourceTree     lt group gt                            id                 isa   PBXGroup              children                      id                            name    Your Group Name               sourceTree     lt group gt                   I actually had to add 2 lines at the end of the first PBXGroup    You can see that if I would have chosen to discard the changes from either Head or the merging branch  there wouldn t have been a parse issue  However  in my case I wanted to keep both groups I added from each branch and simply removing the merge markers wasn t enough  I had to add extra lines to the project pbxproj file in order to maintain correct formatting   So  if you re running into parsing issues after you thought you d resolved all you re merge conflicts  you might want to take a closer look at the  pbxproj and make sure there aren t any formatting problems

User · Answer

Revert the project pbxproj  svn revert --filename--

User · Answer

This is because project names are not suppose to have blank spaces in between them

User · Answer

I had similar issue     Below are steps to resolve it    Navigate to folder where your projectName xcodeproj    Right click and select  Show Package Contents   You will be able to see list of files with  pbxproj extension    Select project pbxproj  Right click and open this file using  Text Edit     You will be able to see  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine                and  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r123  These are generally conflicts that arise when you take update from SVN  Delete these and save file      Now  you ll be able to open project without any error message

User · Answer

In case if you did not find in Text     or  lt  lt  lt  or  gt  gt  gt  gt  like was for me problem was really simple and fun    I change name of App in Xcode  but not change it in UnityProjectSettings before build - that was the problem

User · Answer

Steps to be followed - 1 Navigate to folder where your projectName xcodeproj 2 Right click and select  Show Package Contents   You will be able to see list of files with  pbxproj extension  3 Select project pbxproj  Right click and open this file using  Text Edit   4 You will be able to see  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt                and             These are generally conflicts that arise when you take update from Sourcetree SVN GITLAB  Delete these and save file  5 Now  you ll be able to open project without any error message

User · Answer

Try to find HEAD and  HEAD between the lines and delete this words in project pbxproj  Backup this file before doing this

User · Answer

In case if you did not find in Text     or  lt  lt  lt  or  gt  gt  gt  gt  like was for me problem was really simple and fun    I change name of App in Xcode  but not change it in UnityProjectSettings before build - that was the problem

User · Answer

Goto PhoneGapTest  platform Then delete the folder ios after that go to terminal then type  sudo phonegap build ios after that you can run the project

User · Answer

If you ever merge and still get problems that dont know what they are  I mean not the obvious marks of a diff  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt               gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   Then you can analise your project files with https   github com Karumi Kin  install it and use it kin project pbxproj  It has make extrange erros that doesn t allow open the project more easy to understand and solve  ones of hashes  groups and so on    And by the way  this could also be helpful  thought I have not used it try to diff 2 versions of your project files https   github com bloomberg xcdiff so this will give you really what is going on

User · Answer

subversion will corrupt my project file after a svn up on an almost weekly basis  I m trying to figure out why it does this right now and came across this problem

User · Answer

I came across this problem and my senior told me about a solution i e   Right click on your projectname xcodeproj file here projectname will be the name of your project  Now after right clicked select Show Packages Contents  After that open your projectname pbxproj file in a text editor  Now search for the line containing  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine          and  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r  For example in my case it looked liked this    lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine       9ADAAC6A15DCEF6A0019ACA8      in Resources                   52FD7F3D15DCEAEF009E9322     in Resources      gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r269   Now remove those  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt   mine          and  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt  gt   r lines so it would look like this         9ADAAC6A15DCEF6A0019ACA8    BuyPriceBtn png in Resources            52FD7F3D15DCEAEF009E9322    discussionForm zip in Resources       Now save and open your Xcode project and build it  Everything will be fine

User · Answer

And once you get things working again you should look into using something like subversion or mercurial for backup and revision control  Remember that he electrons don t always go where they are supposed to  backup early and often

User · Answer

Goto PhoneGapTest  platform Then delete the folder ios after that go to terminal then type  sudo phonegap build ios after that you can run the project

User · Answer

It sounds like you re going to have to create a new project in Xcode  go into the old directory  and drag all your source files  nibs  and resources into the Xcode files sidebar in the new project  It shouldn t take more than a few minutes  unless you really did a lot of work with custom build settings or targets  Either that  or revert to the last check-in in your source control and manually add any code files which changed between now and then

User · Answer

This is because project names are not suppose to have blank spaces in between them

User · Answer

It sounds like you re going to have to create a new project in Xcode  go into the old directory  and drag all your source files  nibs  and resources into the Xcode files sidebar in the new project  It shouldn t take more than a few minutes  unless you really did a lot of work with custom build settings or targets  Either that  or revert to the last check-in in your source control and manually add any code files which changed between now and then

User · Answer

Just check the project pbproject file and do a diff against a working version of the project file   Often times this happens when you have conflicts from a version control system like posted here  User file cannot be parsed in subversion in MAC iphone SDK

User · Answer

change your current project folder nam and checkout module the same project then add the current file changes

User · Answer

I faced the same problem recently when trying to merge my branch with a remote branch  However  none of the above solutions seemed appropriate to my problem    There were no merge conflicts between the project pbxproj file in my branch or the remote branch  However  my projectName xcodeproj file would refuse to open for the same reason as shown in the asked question   My solution was to look through the project pbxproj using a text editor and find if there were any irregularities in the file syntax  for e g  an extra curly bracket   I sped this process up by focusing on the lines which were inserted or deleted in old file as compared to the merged file  On closer examination  I found the cause of my problem was the repetition of the following line    xxxxxxxxxxxxx     CP  Check Pods Manifest lock          in my merged file  This led to an unclosed curly bracket and consequent invalid pbxproj syntax  Deleting the above line fixed my problem

User · Answer

Analyse the syntax of your project file  Check it inside your project in terminal   plutil -lint project pbxproj  This will show you the errors from the parser   Possible problem  Some projects set git merging strategy union for project files  This works for most of the times  but will silently kill your project file if it fails  This strategy is defined in the  gitattributes file in your repository

User · Answer

I just ran into same problem  I removed generated strings by git as always but Xcode still refused to open  xcodeproj file  But everything was correct  no missing brackets etc  Finally I tried to quit Xcode and open project when Xcode was closed   then it worked  I hope this helps someone   EDIT   for resolving conflicts in your  xcodeproj file you can use this handy script    Create empty  sh file in your project directory   e g  resolve conflicts sh   Here is the script   projectfile find -d   -name  project pbxproj  projectdir echo   xcodeproj projectfile    projectdir  project pbxproj  tempfile    projectdir  project pbxproj out  savefile    projectdir  project pbxproj mergesave   cat  projectfile   grep -v   lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  HEAD    grep -v             grep -v                tempfile mv  tempfile  projectfile Run it from terminal using sh command  sh resolve conflicts sh

User · Answer

And once you get things working again you should look into using something like subversion or mercurial for backup and revision control  Remember that he electrons don t always go where they are supposed to  backup early and often

User · Answer

subversion will corrupt my project file after a svn up on an almost weekly basis  I m trying to figure out why it does this right now and came across this problem

[iphone] Unable to open project... cannot be opened because the project file cannot be parsed

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