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  • Re: How to deliver and activate apps for MacOS ?

    From Christian Gollwitzer@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 6 07:37:09 2025
    Am 06.02.25 um 01:20 schrieb abu:
    I recently released several Tcl packages and some full TclTk apps for
    MacOs ( see https://wiki.tcl.tk/Caligraft2025).
    Most of these packages/apps contain some binary libraries (*.dylib) and
    for the first run you are forced to do some non-trivial interactive
    steps to meet some MacOS security checks.

    Is there a method (for a common user) to avoid carrying out all these
    steps manually?

    Congratulations, now you know why I've left Apple and went back to Linux
    after 15 years. In order to have the software accepted, it must be
    signed with a certificate, which requires a subscription (used to be
    $99/year). Also in newer versions of macOS, they made it more and more cumbersome to enable "sideloading" which is there term for getting
    software without using the App store. So for the "really normal user"
    you would also need to publish it in the App store.

    Never done that myself, though.

    Christian

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  • From Christian Gollwitzer@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 6 17:30:51 2025
    Am 06.02.25 um 15:41 schrieb abu:
    OK, Christian.

    [...]

    In any case, problems arise, because MacOS recognizes that it's not an application signed by an affiliated Apple Developer...

    I wonder if there's someone in this community, as an officialy
    registered Apple Developer, someone who can take care to sign the
    open-source libs/applications made by this community.

    well I guess that would go against the conditions (and the idea) of this certificate. The signature proves that it is an app from a certain
    developer, who then takes responsibility of the content. I let Kevin
    Walzer chime in, who has actual experience with macOS apps.

    I think building an application folder is the absolute minimum
    requirement. It isn't that hard, I have Makefiles to do this: https://github.com/BessyHDFViewer/BessyHDFViewer/blob/main/Makefile#L23

    The resulting apps look and feel like everything else to a macOS user -
    apart from the signing problem.

    Christian

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  • From Kevin Walzer@21:1/5 to Christian Gollwitzer on Sun Feb 9 15:42:47 2025
    On 2/6/25 11:30 AM, Christian Gollwitzer wrote:

    well I guess that would go against the conditions (and the idea) of this certificate. The signature proves that it is an app from a certain
    developer, who then takes responsibility of the content. I let Kevin
    Walzer chime in, who has actual experience with macOS apps.

    Buying the Apple developer subscription is the only way to avoid all the security warnings, because Apple only recognizes its own certificate.
    However, it's not required to deploy your app.

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