What are .dat.nosyncb77b.* files and how to remove them?

I am trying to remove the project directory but receive a Permission denied for .dat.nosyncb77b.*files. What are these files and how can I remove them?

After trying a number of different approaches to solve an Xcode issue with Could not load authors for file 'Pods/Pods.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj' I have tried removing the whole project directory in an attempt to clone the project fresh from git.

However, when running rm -rf project-dir I got Permission denied for .dat.nosyncb77b.* files. What is strange is that I am the owner of the files. I have tried changing the permissions to 755 and 775 but no luck. All the other directories and files were successfully removed apart from these .dat.nosyncb77b.* files.


None of my other projects have those files. I have cloned the repo again under a different directory and could see that those files do not exist in the same project.xcworkspace/xcuserdata/username.xcuserdatad/ where those files are for that project.

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cauende
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It may be something related to file coordination. These could be some "special" files that are protected by SIP. You can turn off SIP and you should be able to delete them.


Otherwise, people have seen these files in other situations but they aren't well understood. Apple is not likely to explain what is going on.

Posted by
john daniel
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>What are these files...


I believe this is about the OS tagging files related to icloud/desktop sync.

>and how can I remove them?


Guessing here, but I'd leave them alone. Forcing the issue may result in an unstable state as goes iCloud, and you won't like iCloud when it's unstable 😉

Posted by
KMT
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Thank you for your replies KMT and John.


>Guessing here, but I'd leave them alone. Forcing the issue may result in an unstable state as goes iCloud, and you won't like iCloud when it's unstable


I don't actually store this on the iCloud drive; it's stored on local. Unless some processes on Xcode store files on the iCloud drive by default that shouldn't really be the issue, I think.


I haven't had any issues with removing local repos before. I never came across these files, so it is strange why they are there now. Could it have been caused by a process that was abruptly stopped before cleaning up?


>It may be something related to file coordination. These could be some "special" files that are protected by SIP. You can turn off SIP and you should be able to delete them.


Given that I don't have the project in the iCloud drive, if I follow these steps to removing the files do you reckon there could be more major side effects on the file referencing system?

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cauende
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