Cracking open MacOS Sonoma, Sequoia, and Megasogwon

[richmond62]

[In case you don't know 'Megasogwon' is an evil person in Longfellow's Hiawatha, and NOT (well as far as I know) the name for MacOS 16: although maybe it should be.]

This is basically a repost from somewhere it got buried.

This is HOW to allow your Apple machine running MacOS 14, MacOS 15, and, presumably, going forwards, to allow you to run 'any old crap' you want (and be aware that I wrote 'any old crap', and that means what it looks like: so ANY thing: so Uncle Richmond says "be bloody careful.") without having to click 57 buttons, prostitute yourself down the main street, and so on.

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Crack open your Terminal App:
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Type this:

Code: Select all

sudo spctl --master-disable

hit the RETURN key and enter your password.

Then crack open SYSTEM PREFERENCES:
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AND go to 'Security and Privacy' and accept 'software from ANYWHERE'.

THAT IS ALL.

[tperry2x]

Fun fact, as they say - or FYI - whichever you prefer.

You'll find I use this exact same command in the "Read me first" script that comes with the Mac version of OXT Lite.

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[richmond62]

Fun 'fact'/question.

Who EVER reads those 'read me' documents?

ALSO: 'doing it directly' is probably better than via xTalk.

[tperry2x]

Who EVER reads those 'read me' documents?

Well, I did make it a big "Read me first" with a great big warning triangle... I hoped someone would.
(to be fair, I did mention this back in April)
And if you remember, you told me that you had 'allow from anywhere turned on' already. Perhaps that was a different mac though.

ALSO: 'doing it directly' is probably better than via xTalk.

That's not xTalk, that's Applescript. I did it in Applescript so it would run without a hitch, being 'built-in' to the OS. It was either that or a shell script - but then I'd have encountered other problems with people not making it executable, or Apple forcing people away from a bash shell as default over to zsh.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

That's not xTalk, that's Applescript. I did it in Applescript so it would run without a hitch, being 'built-in' to the OS. It was either that or a shell script - but then I'd have encountered other problems with people not making it executable, or Apple forcing people away from a bash shell as default over to zsh.

The problem with that is if you save your AppleScript as a standalone .app bundle, is the compiled applet binary ABI compatible with all of the versions of macOS OXT runs on (v10.9 to current)? I think that was an issue for the applet I had in my DMG (that just ran shell commands to create the dummy license file ahead of time), it didn't work on newer macOS 12+ IIRC. To fix that I guess would need to have it as a non-compiled version, or separate .app for certain macOS versions, or maybe could be an Automator action or whatever? Of course best fix would be to have engine compiled for macOS with the fix included or otherwise patch out that license check stack from the IDE binary, annoying that it's even embedded in there. Or could just give up on Apple forever, may be an option

[tperry2x]

Or could just give up on Apple forever, may be an option

That is incredibly tempting... I'll see what MacOS 16 has in store for everyone...
Seriously though, it does seem to be being made increasingly difficult by Apple. Of course, I expect that it's only going to get harder as everything will be increasingly locked to the App Store. MacOS is increasingly headed towards the iOS-style unified Apple interface, so at that point, it may be time to reassess if it's realistic to keep chasing Apple's ever-moving changes. All it takes is Apple to suddenly depreciate (or completely kill off) an API that OXT uses, and the IDE will suddenly not open. We obviously have no control or no leverage over that, and like hundreds (thousands / millions?) of other developers, we are at the mercy of Apple here.

As you know, that's why the engine has to keep in step with these OS changes, but it's not at all surprising to me if a MacOS beta or mainstream update suddenly decides not to run OXT one day soon. I'm kind of expecting it to be honest.

Back on topic (sorry, I'm rambling) - I tested that applescript on MacOS 10.9 (Mavericks) through to 12.7.4 (Monterey) - as I couldn't go any further OS-wise, because my ancient macs choke on anything higher than that - even with an opencore boot patcher, just the graphics cards aren't up to it.

The script seems to work on those OS versions, but for all I know it might be broken beyond belief in Ventura+ (don't think it is as far as I've heard).

As you know, I did remove the registration requirement from the Linux engine (and my recompiled Windows one which I didn't end up using). It's incredibly easy, and just requires setting a true to a false, but of course that means the ENTIRE engine needs recompiling just to set these couple of lines of script!

(unless the Mac and Windows engines can be hex-patched... Tom... if you are out there?)