NOOP AI 9.3.3 DX Beta

NOOP AI 9.3.3 DX Beta

A packaging release: the sideload IPA carries the iOS widgets again, and — the half that actually
makes them useful — the App Group they read through is provisioned on the way out. No app code
changed.

Fixed

• The AltStore/SideStore IPA ships the widget extension again. It had been stripped alongside the
  Watch app on the assumption that generic re-signing could not provision either. That is true of an
  embedded watchOS bundle and not true of an app extension: AltStore and SideStore re-sign
  NOOPWidgets.appex together with the host app. The packaging step now removes only Watch/, and
  the assertion that used to fail if the widget was present is inverted — it now fails if the widget
  is missing, because what the bundle contains is the promise made to the person installing it.
• The widget can actually read the app's data. Tools/prepare-ios-sideload-app.sh — added
  upstream with ryanbr#887 to embed the ad-hoc App Group + HealthKit capability template that AltSign needs
  in order to provision and re-sign the shared container — existed in the tree with no caller in
  this fork's release path. It is now invoked on the sideload bundle, after the Watch removal and
  before zipping (it code-signs; any later change to the bundle would break that seal). Without it a
  widget installs cleanly and then shows dashes forever, which is exactly the failure this avoids.
  The resolver that picks the provisioned group at runtime (WidgetSnapshot.resolveSuiteName) was
  already correct and is unchanged.
• Two repairs in the macOS test target, found by running StrandTests for the first time since
  the 9.3.1 and 9.3.2 upstream merges — both were compile failures that no app build could reveal,
  because the test target is built only by xcodebuild … test:
  • AICoachEmptyReplyAndUrlTests (which arrived with upstream ryanbr#1087) called parseChatContent with
    one argument, while this fork keeps the richer parseChatContent(_:isLocalServer:) that tailors
    the truncation notice to local servers versus hosted gateways. Adapted to the fork's signature.
  • project.yml had lost StrandiOSShared/WidgetSnapshot.swift from the StrandTests sources
    during the 9.3.1 merge, so WidgetSnapshotTests could not see the type and the whole target
    failed to build. Restored — and those four tests cover precisely the App Group resolver this
    release now depends on.

Unchanged on purpose

• The Apple Watch app is still excluded from the sideload IPA. Sideloaders have installed embedded
  watchOS bundles unreliably for years, and the failure mode is not a missing watch app but a failed
  installation — the tester gets nothing. A free Apple ID's three-app limit (sideloader + NOOP +
  watch app) is the second reason. Nothing about the project changed to achieve this: NOOPWatch
  remains a dependency of NOOPiOS, the canonical build stays complete, and only a staged copy is
  thinned. An Xcode source build and the Full IPA are unaffected. Upstream's own release step makes
  the same cut.
• No analytics, protocol, storage or UI behaviour changed in this release.

Verification

• Packaging run against the real iOS build product: the sideload IPA contains
  PlugIns/NOOPWidgets.appex and no Watch/; the Full IPA contains both.
• codesign -d --entitlements reports the same application-groups value on the app and on the
  widget after the zip round-trip, and codesign --verify --deep --strict passes on the extracted
  bundle — so the capability template survives packaging rather than only existing on disk.
• StrandTests: 1815 tests, 0 failures (1 skipped), where the target previously did not compile.
• xcodebuild of NOOPiOS (iOS) and Strand (macOS): both BUILD SUCCEEDED.
• python3 Tools/i18n_audit.py --ci exits 0.
• Not verified on a device. Whether AltStore/SideStore provision the two App IDs and the shared
  group on a given iPhone is the one step that needs your own Apple ID: sideload this build and check
  that the widget shows real values rather than dashes.

Thanks

To everyone who pushed back on the previous release's packaging — the widget removal was the wrong
call, and the correction plus the App Group point came directly out of that. The capability template
itself is @Quaii's work (ryanbr#887).

Install

• iOS: add the AltStore/SideStore source, or download NOOP-ios-unsigned-v9.3.3-dx-beta.ipa and
  sign it yourself with your own free Apple ID. This one includes the widgets. Want the Apple Watch
  app too? Take NOOP-ios-full-unsigned-v9.3.3-dx-beta.ipa instead — it needs a signer or paid
  Developer team that can provision the watch bundle.
• macOS: unzip NOOP-macos-v9.3.3-dx-beta.zip, then right-click → Open the first time — the
  bundle is ad-hoc signed, not notarised. macOS may ask you to re-approve Bluetooth after an update,
  because the code identity changes with every build.