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

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