Indexing a Apple Help Book on BigSur

Question

I'm trying to generate an Apple Help Book index file (Big Sur), I'm using the following scripts:

hiutil -I corespotlight -Cf Base.lproj.cshelpindex -a -vv .
hiutil -I lsm -Cf Base.lproj.helpindex -a -vv .

Files are generated, but when I validate them I get:

Index format no longer supported.
or
Unable to open Archive

I've generated the same files with Apple's "Help Indexer" GUI program, but the files too are apparently no-longer supported.

I've read that it apparently works on High-Sierra, but I don't have access to a Mac with that OS.

Is there a known workaround for this? or am I doing it wrong?

The ultimate goal would be to run on GitHub Actions, but I'm limited as I can't run a macOS Virtual Machine on there.

• Maybe I could find the version of hiutil that ran on High Sierra (hiutil version 1.3.2 (55) ?) and run that in a Linux Docker?
• Maybe I could find out the file format of the .helpindex files and write a program to generate them

Thanks

Chris

Answer 1

I think I have the answer, the commands need to be:

hiutil -I corespotlight -Caf Base.lproj.cshelpindex -vv .
hiutil -I lsm  -Caf Base.lproj.helpindex -vv .

and to validate

hiutil -I corespotlight -Af Base.lproj.helpindex
hiutil -I corespotlight -Af Base.lproj.cshelpindex