FaceGroupAnalyzer: two live instances register the Core Data model twice and abort the process with +[MIManagedFace entity] Failed to find a unique match

Constructing a second FaceGroupAnalyzer while a first one is still alive registers the framework's Core Data managed object model a second time. Core Data can then no longer resolve +[MIManagedFace entity], and the process is terminated with SIGTRAP (exit status 133).

Three things make this worse than a normal API misuse:

It happens with completely separate working directories. The two instances are logically independent — different directories, different stores, no shared state that the API surface exposes. Nothing in the signature of init(workingDirectory:) suggests that two of them cannot coexist, and the parameter's existence implies the opposite.

There is no way to detect or prevent it from a library. FaceGroupAnalyzer is not a singleton and offers no way to ask whether an instance already exists in the process. Any two independent subsystems in an app — say, a background analysis service and a foreground preview — that each construct an analyzer will terminate the app. In my case the app must now enforce single-instance access through its own serial queue and lock, which is a constraint the framework imposes but does not state.

Construction alone does not fail, so the problem surfaces later and elsewhere. Both instances construct successfully; Core Data only emits warnings at that point. The abort comes when both are alive and one of them does real work (update() and reading the grouping). So the crash lands far from its cause, in code that is individually correct.

Feedback: FB24174678

FaceGroupAnalyzer: two live instances register the Core Data model twice and abort the process with +[MIManagedFace entity] Failed to find a unique match
 
 
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