Upgrading IntelliJ IDEA after Sierra Upgrade: does not have write access to /private/var

Question

Trying to upgrade Intellij IDEA from 2016.2 to 2016.2.5 and I am getting this error:

IDEA does not have write access to /private/var/folders/_q/7md3pcy1

Answer 1

Similar for GoLand, find your Goland app dir

sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/GoLand.app 
sudo chmod -R 777 /Applications/GoLand.app

Answer 2

I've just encountered something very similar while testing jar updates with my app AuctionSieve.

The problem occurs when you run the app from the Downloads folder and try to do the update - it gets FileNotFoundExceptions because the entire folder macOS creates under /private/var/folders is a read-only filesystem. You can't change the permissions of the files at all.

Moving the app from the Downloads folder to the Applications folder solved the problem!

Answer 3

Finder or it's menu bar (Go)
Open Applications
Ctrl+Click (right-click) PyCharm (jetbrains .app)
click get info
at the bottom, expand permissions
unlock the padlock
change all three to "read&write" to allow app to make changes to sys
lock the padlock
restart the application

There were several engineers stating the "systemtools" had to be updated in the virtual environment whether by pip or interpreter pckg mgr.

For me, it turned out to be the fact that the imports were supposed to be local, thus be pulled from the repo.

Answer 4

It helped me to just use the Jetbrains Toolbox to do the whole upgrade. Worked like a charm, didn't need any command line incantations or mucking about with OS folders.

Answer 5

So after talking to Jetbrains support, there's nothing that can be done as they can't duplicate the issue and not enough people have reported it. The patch process doesn't work but you can just download the latest version. Problem solved.

Answer 6

This is happening because of some new security feature in Sierra. I found some information about it here http://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/app-translocation.html

The work around I used was to go to the Application directory where the Intellij app was and delete the xattr com.apple.quarantine from the app. This stops the app from opening up in that read only directory.

ex.

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine IntelliJ\ IDEA.app