pgShapeLoader cannot be opened because of a problem

Question

I installed the OpenGeo Suite 4.8 on MacOS 10.13. I can open pgadmin3 from the package, as well as PostGIS. When opening the pgShapeLoader I get the following error:

pgShapeLoader cannot be opened because of a problem.
Check with the developer to make sure pgShapeLoader works with this version of macOS. You may need to reinstall the application. Be sure to install any available updates for the application and macOS.

Process: pgShapeLoader-bin [8517] Path:
/Applications/PostGIS Utilities/pgShapeLoader.app/Contents/MacOS/pgShapeLoader Identifier:
org.opengeo.pgShapeLoader Version: ??? Code Type:
X86-64 (Native) Parent Process: ??? [1] Responsible:
pgShapeLoader-bin [8517] User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2018-06-04 13:34:00.559 +0200 OS Version:
Mac OS X 10.13.4 (17E199) Report Version: 12 Anonymous UUID:
9D650379-9A83-3E81-917A-0F25D751B9FA

Sleep/Wake UUID: 1F5D21D1-952B-4A1E-92BC-3CFBF24AC271

Time Awake Since Boot: 100000 seconds Time Since Wake: 1100 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 0

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT) Exception Codes:
0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000 Exception Note:
EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Reason: DYLD, [0x4] Symbol missing

Application Specific Information: dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Applications/PostGIS Utilities/pgShapeLoader.app/Contents/Resources/lib

Dyld Error Message: Symbol not found: _inflateValidate Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib Expected in: /Applications/PostGIS Utilities/pgShapeLoader.app/Contents/Resources/lib/libz.1.dylib in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

Does anybody understand what the error message is trying to tell me? Is there information in it that might help me to open pgShapeLoader?

Answer 1

This is not a particular problem of the OpenGeo Suite but a more general problem of MacOS Sierra and Hight Sierra with many other applications. The fundamental problem seems documented in this bug (Incompatibility with libpng ≥ 1.6.26)

dyld: Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
Expected in: ./libs/libz.1.dylib

The solution adopted for the other applications is to replace the (old) library in pgShapeLoader.app (/Applications/PostGIS Utilities/pgShapeLoader.app/Contents/Resources/lib/libz.1.dylib) by another version (/usr/lib/libz.1.dylib (or /usr/local/lib/libz.1.dylib))