Gatekeeper & codesigning

[jack_norton]

So today I updated to Mountain Lion. As expected, with the default setting, none of the renpy games start.
I've spent various hours trying to use the commandline tool to codesign the apps, but I was getting all sort of funny errors like "object file format unrecognized, invalid or unsuitable" or "permission denied" and more until I gave up.
I am going to write a page in my site as suggested by Jake explaining how to turn off Gatekeeper so people can still play my games and probably is wise thing to do for everyone that is planning to distribute their games on Mac (freeware or commercial).
I'm sure this will inevitably lead to a loss of mac users playing my games but honestly, I don't have time to waste to "fix" games that are working perfectly fine once Gatekeeper is turned off.

/sarcasm mode ON
Cheers to Apple for discouraging even more indie developers to sell direct and try to be really independent.

[jack_norton]

YES! I managed to codesign! if you have Mountain Lion please test: http://www.winterwolves.net/SpiritedHeartTrial.zip should start without any warning with Gatekeeper will contact pytom to see if the process can be automated (it should be since is just a commadline).

[Arcanum]

I know it's a pathetic wish, but I hope this doesn't discourage people from developing for mac =/ I saw your post on twitter and got scared you would stop!

[jack_norton]

Well I wouldn't have stopped, I wrote that because was very angry But if the trend continues this way for example I might wait to make a mac beta testing and also delay the mac release. I mean, if every time I rebuild the app need to codesign ok, doesn't take much but what will come next? what if the autoupdater screws up the signature? or some other obscure thing? when a OS comes too much in the way of the developer reducing his freedom and adding obstacles in every possible way (like if wasn't hard enough already to develop!), the developer gets pissed

[jack_norton]

Well so far nobody replied so I guess there aren't so many people using it yet (at least following me on twitter/facebook and in several forums including this one where I posted).

[jack_norton]

So an user tested it and apparently, didn't work fun thing is that the commandline codesign didn't report any problem. So it's like "OK!" then you try, and doesn't work. Well, for now I'll stop wasting my time and concentrate my effort on Windows until Win8 comes out...

[EroBotan]

Just want to let you know that I do read your progress ^^. It's just that I have zero experience with mac and friends that I don't think i can say anything useful x__X

[jack_norton]

Well as I said on twitter, I think Apple (and soon MS too once win8 is out) need to be careful with this approach. They think they can rule the world and do anything without facing any consequence. The truth is that if 90% of devs moved to Linux (like Valve is trying to do) they would disappear. Even if that is an extreme case and probably won't happen, even just a good percentage (like 30-40%) could seriously hurt their business.
But anyway maybe some good coder will find a solution. Was a bit weird that I managed to do something like that on my own!

[EroBotan]

guess we can only wait and see ... I hope windows doesn't choose this approach since I have lots of trouble with linux x__X

A newbie question, can we sell our mac game without going through their app store?. I browse wikipedia, it seems that mountain lion is an OS ... . i thought it was app store x__X

[jack_norton]

Ok my codesign is successful I was using an "old" codesign command, once I updated xcode to 4.4 and checked "download commandline tool" (which was disabled by default) it worked.
I've send an email to pytom about it a few days ago, since I believe can be easily automated within the launcher (though I used the Terminal to do that).