Apple wants apps to be signed. With newer MacOS versions, unsigned apps look less and less welcome.
As a cross-platform developer with almost no knowledge of Apple specifics, I have to learn how to sign Apple apps. A step-by-step recipe would be helpful.
So far I understood all the following is necessary:
Register for an Apple ID [1].
Agree with endless pages of legalese.
Apply for an Apple developer account [2].
Choose among several categories (individual, nonprofit, government, ...).
Accept further pages of legalese.
Agree with unspecified membership fees that are waived for open-source projects.
Wait for unspecified time until you will or will not be admitted by Apple.
Create a certificate from Xcode.
Open or create an arbitrary project to get to the main menu.
In the main menu (Xcode) > Preferences > Accounts > Manage Certificates > "+" (bottom left) to create certificate.
In the main menu (Xcode) > Preferences > Accounts > Download Manual Profiles. Seems to create a file with extension .developerprofile.
From here, an unknown number of steps is missing....
Maybe the last step involves the command codesign [3],
codesign -s <identity> --keychain <full-path-to-keychain> <path-to-disk-image>
What is <identity>?
What is the keychain file?
Who can confirm or correct the above, and supply the missing steps?
Note that the build process shall ultimately be run from CMake. Therefore command-line tools are preferred over GUI actions.
[1] https://appleid.apple.com/account
[2] https://developer.apple.com/
[3] https://stackoverflow.com/a/37923530/1017348
You can build and sign to completion using Xcode, or you can build and then sign and notarise the binaries using codesign, altool, and stapler tools.
Xcode attempts to handle the complexity for you, at the cost of your not needing to understand or know about the individual steps involved. .developerprofile files are part of Xcode and Xcode is not essential to preparing a binary for distribution.
See Apple's Xcode Guide - Distribute your app and Distribute outside the Mac App Store (macOS).
Apple have also published the following guides on code signing and notarizing:
Code Signing Guide
Notarizing macOS Software Before Distribution
Identity
What is <identity>?
identity is common name field of the digital certificate being used to sign the binary. The digital certificate is an X.509 certificate issued by Apple. You can obtain certificates for submission to the Apple app stores, and distribution outside of their stores, through the Apple developer web site.
See Apple Developer - Certificates
Apple Developer Program membership is required to request, download, and use signing certificates issued by Apple. For developers part of a team enrolled as an organization, you must also be the account holder or an admin to request distribution certificates used for submitting apps to the App Store.
Keychain
What is the keychain file?
Keychain files are managed through the Keychain Access application on macOS, see Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access. By default, the user's keychain files are stored in ~/Library/Keychains.
The keychain file is where macOS stores secure user information, such as credentials and certificate keys. The keychain file needs to be specified for the codesign tool to locate the private key associated with the signing certificate.
See Apple Developer - Keychain Services:
Securely store small chunks of data on behalf of the user.
Computer users often have small secrets that they need to store securely. For example, most people manage numerous online accounts. Remembering a complex, unique password for each is impossible, but writing them down is both insecure and tedious. Users typically respond to this situation by recycling simple passwords across many accounts, which is also insecure.
The keychain services API helps you solve this problem by giving your app a mechanism to store small bits of user data in an encrypted database called a keychain. When you securely remember the password for them, you free the user to choose a complicated one.
Support from Apple
If the documentation linked above does not help, please contact Apple. The process you are facing is demanded by Apple, and Apple should burden the support it creates.
As a registered Apple Developer, you have access to Technical Support Incidents:
Requesting Technical Support
A Technical Support Incident (TSI) is a request for code-level support for Apple frameworks, APIs, and tools, and is available to members of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program.
Related
Forward: There are many similar SO questions with regard to this error. I've visited dozens of them over the past days, but none seem to have a solution to my problem. They mostly are from developers with full admin rights, unlike myself. Most solutions are also hacks or unclear.
I am a member of a developer team at Apple's developer.apple.com site. I've been charged with uploaded an iOS application I've developed to iTunesConnect, in order to be able to deploy it with TestFlight.
In order to successfully accomplish this. I asked for the following to be done.
That I be added as a member developer. See certificates here.
A matching App with the same bundle-ID be created for me on iTunesConnect.
A Distribution provisioning profile be added at developer.apple.com for my specific App.
Despite all of this. When I try to validate the app, I'm met with the following message.
It would appear from a manual signing attempt that because the provisioning profile was created by a team administrator, that I cannot sign it without their private key. Assuming this is correct, then how can any developer ever distribute apps if:
A distribution provisioning profile requires you be the creator in order to be validated.
Only a team admin can create a distribution provisioning profile.
This appears to be a paradox.
What can be done to resolve this conflict? I am only a member of this development team temporarily, and would like to formulate a clear solution to this problem so that I do not test their patience with repeated troubleshooting questions. To make it easier to answer this question, I've attached some extra images that might be useful.
My app's general panel in Xcode when using automatic signing. It shows I am signing on behalf of the team.
Solving this problem required two steps.
A certificate signing request (CSR) was created and sent to the developer who had created the distribution provisioning profile. You can create a CSR by going to: Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority. Once I received this CSR back from the developer, I double clicked it to install it in my keychain. It then appeared as so:
Next, the developer had to add the certificate they sent me to the provisioning profile for the app on developer.apple.com. I then downloaded this provisioning profile again and selected it in within Xcode as seen below.
Once this is completed, you should be able to validate the application.
I got this error when my ExportOptions.plist file had the wrong value for the method. I had "enterprise" rather than "ad-hoc". (This is the file passed to xcodebuild via the -exportOptionsPlist option.)
I'm working on an app for Mac OS that consists of three binaries:
The main app, to be installed in the Applications folder.
A widget (for OS X Yosemite)
A LoginItem that monitors some stuff in the background (daemon-like, always running)
All three binaries connect to a certain web service with the same OAuth token. The token is retrieved by the main app (on first run, after the user signed in to the service) and stored in the system's Keychain.
To make sure the other two parts of the app can also access the same token, I'm trying to set up Keychain sharing. In Apple's Developer Portal, I've created three App Store Provisioning profiles, one for each binary. All of them are signed with the same developer certificate ("3rd Party Mac Developer Application").
In this situation, none of the binaries will run on my development system, citing "Code Signature Invalid". Also, in the system console, taskgated writes this message: "killed [app] because its use of the keychain-access-groups entitlement is not allowed (error code -67050)".
It is worth nothing that in the capabilities page of each target in Xcode, the Keychain sharing capability was enabled without any error whatsoever.
How do I solve this issue? The only thing I've came up with is simply disabling Keychain sharing, but this will require the user to click (Always) Allow when running the widget for the first time.
Another solution would be to eliminate the keychain altogether, but storing a OAuth token in an unsafe place like NSUserDefaults is not the way to go. I can't find a secure alternative for the keychain, which I think would be the best solution if it works anyway.
As a developer of an app it could be quite a turn off if half of your users cannot open your app because they get following error.
[i know there is a workaround by going to sys preferences->security-> allow apps from "anywhere" but users of our apps are kids, they may not be in the best position to know how to do that]
What things I need to take care of in oder to avoid this warning, or to get apple developer identity?
This app has been published on App Store, so all the provisioning profiles and certificates are there. Now we want to put the app on our website, but before doing that we want to eliminate this gatekeeper hurdle.
In the screenshot above you can see that the right developer is selected while archiving.
The signing identity used for App Store submissions and for independent publishing are different. The latter requires a Developer ID identity be used. See Distributing Applications Outside the Mac App Store for more information about the process.
What is the current Apple's policy? Speaking about Gatekeeper, they never mention that getting a Developer ID guarantees that your app will be allowed to run with the default Mac App Store and identified developers option. They never say that every valid signed app will be automatically accepted.
I cannot distribute my app in the App Store since it violates its guidelines. But it's useful, does not contain malware, ads or so.
If you sign up as an Apple developer, there are three ways to release your apps:
Through the App Store, in which case Apple pre-screens them before allowing customers to download them. If you choose this option, there is no guarantee that Apple will accept your app (although following their App Store guidelines gives you good odds).
By signing the app with your developer ID, and then distributing it yourself. The developer ID is granted automatically when you sign up as a developer, Apple doesn't screen your app at all, and apps signed this way will run under Gatekeeper's default setting ("Mac App Store and identified developers").
HOWEVER, if it comes to Apple's attention that malware is being distributed with your signature on it, they can revoke your developer ID certificate. If this happens, Gatekeeper will start blocking your signed apps (including any non-malicious ones). Unfortunately, while I think I remember reading a statement from Apple defining what they consider malicious, I can't find it now.
With or without a developer membership, you can distribute unsigned apps. Apple has no say in this, either before or after distribution, but Gatekeeper's default policy will block them.
You can check if Gatekeeper will accept your app's signature..
$spctl -vat execute MyApp.app
you'll see..
MyApp.app: accepted
source=Developer ID
I've done codesigning and submitting for iOS apps countless times. This time it struck me with the Mac App Store. I'm repeatedly getting the same error message:
"My Name" is a valid identity. However,
you do not have the associated package identity.
I've recognized this 2 topics here on stack overflow:
mas-code-signing-identity-private-key and mac-app-package-identity-not-installed
Nothing inside there solved the problem for me.
Thats how I (most reliably) reproduce this message:
I clean up all my certificates and private keys starting with "Mac Developer" or "3rd Party Mac Developer". Of course also the expired ones.
Revoking all the stuff inside the Mac certification portal.
Create App-ID (did it only once)
Create new certificate for Mac Development. I can only assume that this is comparable to the debugging certificates for iOS development.
Create new certificate for Mac App. Once again I can only assume that this could be something similar to a distribution certificate in iOS-development.
For completion reasons create a new certificate/profile for my system.
Create a production provisioning profile. I can only assume that this might be equivalent to an iOS distribution profile.
I then download all the certificate mess and install it properly. Some go into the Keychain, others got into the Preferences and XCode.
For making sure I restart XCode or even the whole Mac (doesn't change the frustrating outcome anyway).
I go to the project build settings and select the production provisioning profile, because I assume "production" is equivalent to "distribution". Changing the codesigning identity in the target build settings doesn't work either. While Apple claims in it's documentation that for App Store submission the signing identity has to be changed in the project build settings.
I run an archive build.
I select the archive in the organizer and click validate.
This error message appears:
"My Name" is a valid identity. However,
you do not have the associated package identity.
I can't find any pointer to what the term "package identity" actually means. What is most frustrating to me is that this terminology mess in Apples documentation concerning the code signing and submission process appears not very clear and precise to me. At least not as clear and precise as the documentation for the same process concerning iOS App submission (which is using completely different terminology).
Probably I understood something wrong? Thanx for any help or pointer in advance.
OK, I have some important pointers (additional to Apples documentation) for people stumbling over similar issues.
The error message is totally misleading.
Don't take every word in Apples documentation too seriously.
For solving the issue, 2 points have been most significant:
Additional to all the other profile-mess you need 2 certificates for submission to the Mac App Store (contrary to the same process for iOS App Store submission). Both have to be installed together with their corresponding public and private key pairs.
Mac App
Mac Installer
The codesigning needs to be set on the build target, not the project. I don't remember where but this was described wrong side around in one of Apples documentations.
Eventually my submission worked by keeping to those 2 points.
There is an additional issue with Keychain & XCode.
When Xcode uses a certificate, they want one and only one certificate in your keychain. If you have an expired one, as well as a valid one, Xcode often fails the operation.
So you look at your keychain using Keychain Access, and do not see an expired certificate. It is still there! The default setting for Keychain Access hides expired certificates. Goto the View menu and select Show Expired Certificates. Delete all the expired ones, they are not good for anything.
Quit Keychain Acces and Relaunch Xcode. Xcode often requires a relaunch when adding/deleting certificates.
At that point, the Archive Validate process worked for me.
This is what it was for me as well.
Just want to clarify, you absolutely need both Mac App Distribution and Mac Installer Distribution certificates. Thanks Jacque for your explanation above. It should look like this:
Yes the problem is Mac Installer Distribution certificate.
The easiest way to have everything fixed and loose all the troubles just go to Xcode->Window->Organizer->Devices and then on the lower right corner press on Refresh and log in with your account... xcode will generate and download all the certificates and provisioning profiles needed.