Publish FreeCAD on the Apple store

[yorikvanhavre]

Need to check:

• What is the process to follow
• What are the technical requirements, ie. what do we need to change to our packaging process
• Are there any fees? If yes, are there exceptions for open-source projects?

[luzpaz]

Please give permissions to the repo (to help fix formatting etc...)+ I'll be happy to assist with some of these open tickets as well

[luzpaz]

@yorikvanhavre ☝️

[yorikvanhavre]

Gave you write perms, @luzpaz . Let's see how to apply for this FOSS license!

edit i can't find anything about that license on the web... where have you seen it?

[luzpaz]

https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/

[adrianinsaval]

Eligible regions: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China mainland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, United Kingdom, United States.

So it seems to me the FPA wouldn't be elegible, it later says

Fee waivers for other regions will be added as they become available. If you have questions, please contact us.

so maybe there is hope. Seriously, I don't understand why this is region based? They love their walled garden don't they.
For the record I don't think the 99usd yearly cost is worth it but I'm not an apple user so I'm biased.

[yorikvanhavre]

That's ridiculous... Anyway, that pretty much closes the discussion. Maybe we can try contacting them, though...

[chennes]

If we just want to sign our distribution from some random guy on the internet, I am an ADC member and can compile and sign it. I just figured it would look more professional if there was an official entity called "FreeCAD" instead of "Chris Hennes".

[yorikvanhavre]

It would, I think.. That's the kind of thing that helps people (the ones who don't know the famous chris hennes yet, that is) to figure out this is the "official" FreeCAD..

[adrianinsaval]

It would be better but not "let's give apple 100 bucks a year" better and signed by Chris Hennes is better than not signed at all which probably scares some people away currently and requires you to jump through some hoops to run FreeCAD. Still, we won't lose anything by asking so IMO it's worth contacting them and see what they say.

[JohnOCFII]

I think it is reasonable to put $100/year of contributions towards having FreeCAD signed (hell, I'd earmark my contributions that way if needed). Reading the notes above, I'm not sure what about the FPA doesn't fit the requirements? I'd think having a person on the team who is in one of the supported countries could do the application process and thus be accepted. I've been a member of the Apple Developer Program in the past, but am not currently.

[adrianinsaval]

FPA is theoretically not elegible for the waiver because it's based in Belgium not one of the available countries. IMO it's worth a shot asking them.

On paying the fee, if I donated money to freecad (and I currently don't so don't put too much weight in my opinion) I wouldn't want it to end up going to apple but there's probably many around who wouldn't mind, maybe a small crowd sourcing campaign for it could be made (and perhaps for Windows too in case it also costs something).

[luzpaz]

I say it's worth the time for the us to just earmark $100 and do it if we can't get a waiver. The headache from macOS users complaining is not worth the time we could be spending on other issues.

Edit: and potentially the cost would eventually be covered by macOS contributors who can run FreeCAD on their platform more seamlessly

[JohnOCFII]

I'd be happy to make my 2022 donation be $100 directly to the person who's willing to jump through the hoops. (I'd volunteer to do it, but guess you want someone on the core team to do it). As an aside, Blender is code-signed for Mac. I do know that my Fusion 360 using friends throw up the fact that FreeCAD isn't signed as yet another roadblock for them to try FreeCAD.

[chennes]

Note that we're talking about two different (though related) things here. It's straightforward to sign the executable: I regularly compile FreeCAD with XCode on my Mac and if it's anything like the process with Swift, it's basically just an option in the Build menu. The process is pretty straightforward (though my mac compile is broken at the moment so I can't actually test that assertion!). When the user runs an app I've signed they don't get the scary popup, they get a less scary message that it was signed by Chris Hennes and downloaded off the internet, do they want to run? So that would be marginally acceptable for us, and better than the current situation. Better if it said "FreeCAD Association," but the message is the same either way.

The other item is publishing on the Apple App Store: that's more than just a checkbox, there's a whole process. I'd expect FreeCAD to make it through the review process, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through. And when it's actually published on the App Store, we want it to be published by "The FreeCAD Project" not "Random Dude on the Internet a.k.a. Chris Hennes".

[JohnOCFII]

Note that we're talking about two different (though related) things here.

Really good point. I guess being signed seems more critical to me, but then I'm old, and have been downloading and installing apps since long before the App Store existed. To continue the Blender comparison - Blender is signed, but (on a quick look) does NOT appear to be on the Apple App Store.

[yorikvanhavre]

Creating an appleID for myself to ask them officially about our Belgium-based FPA...

[luzpaz]

Where are we on this ?

[chennes]

I was unable to figure out how to sign the FreeCAD executable -- the options that show up when I work on a Swift project do not show up for the FreeCAD Xcode project that CMake creates. I don't know how to correct that.

[luzpaz]

@chennes what version of xcode ?

[luzpaz]

ping

[chennes]

I continue to fight with it in my spare time. I thought I was making progress by telling cMake I wanted to create a bundle, and by directly adding the code signing in the cMake files, but although I get the signing options screen in XCode when I look at the project setting, when I tell it to archive the options still aren't there. Anyone know an Xcode consultant available for hire? At this point I'd pay for help.

[luzpaz]

Lets ask other FLOSS project folk first before hiring anyone 😜

[BKLronin]

I'm currently trying the same for my app and so far the process without xcode would be via codesign and entlistment and info files were you set and explain all the things you want to access etc. There you also specify dev id and Nr etc.

Can be put into a pipeline but problem for me currently is that my app is not asking access for the specified devices etc.

Used freecad on m1 mac today so you probably have solved it already.

[chennes]

Unfortunately no, it isn't solved. I'm fine with using XCode to do the signing, but I can't get it to recognize the FreeCAD executable as something it can sign. There has to be some cMake magic I am missing to get the XCode project set up correctly.

[BKLronin]

I´m trying the same for a nuitka executable or alternatively pyinstaller .app packages. I can´t get anything of this into Xcode, so I sign it manually afterwards. Like so: codesign --force --sign 'Developer ID Application: Name(ID)' --entitlements entitlements.plist --deep --verbose myapp as an example.

In theory this should work but there are more steps for it to get into the appstore. I found this ressource to be quite helpful and I guess it might work similar for signing C stuff.

https://github.com/nyavramov/python_app_mac_app_store#entitlements-plist-file

Maybe thats of some kind of help. Just spend two days so far on this. Definetely not fun.

[BKLronin]

I got mine notarized using external tools. Should work for any executable.

I just wondered why I can open freecad anyway with the warning while my app just triggered "can´t be opened" and there was no option for it.

[chennes]

I've started the process of getting the FPA an Apple Business account.