Glimpse: Determine Mac packaging process for Glimpse

[TrechNex]

Will ideally be automated as described in #2

[LunaTheFoxgirl]

For mac, to start off with the easiest package format we could use is homebrew.

[dxf]

.pkg would also be a good release format to allow for large institutions to deploy without major fuss iirc, although asking someone on r/macsysadmin may be a good idea.

[jwells89]

Generally speaking .pkg isn't bad, but these days it's typically used only if the app in question needs to copy files to various locations of its own bundle and/or needs to run scripts.

The most universal/versatile setup would probably be an entirely self-contained .app package contained in a .dmg disk image. Installation is just mount → copy → unmount → delete dmg, and it makes it immediately clear that the app is portable in nature (simply copy to a thumb drive instead of /Applications/). Most popular Mac apps do this, so it should be a well-supported flow for deployment tools.

[LunaTheFoxgirl]

Don't you need to sign the app via apple before you can really deploy apps via dmg files?
(sorry, it's been a while since I've last used a macOS machine. And the machine i used was a hackintosh)

[jwells89]

As far as I understand, unsigned apps downloaded from the internet will give the security alert and require the right-click bypass to open regardless of installation method. Signing is not required for DMG distribution – you may be thinking of notarization, a fully automated process in which Apple scans an app for malware and flags its signature as "safe", which will be required for developer-signed apps with macOS Catalina and above.

[pipboy96]

For updating on macOS Sparkle seems to be the standard. There are also numerous projects for packaging the app into a nice-looking DMG file.

[TrechNex]

Currently planning to get this working on TravisCI.

Mac build process for upstream found here, but is for CircleCI and their Mac server is costly: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/gimp-macos-build

[TrechNex]

Unfortunately after a few weeks working on this I've run into a number of road blocks trying to get this working. It either needs someone more Mac savvy than I to puzzle out the build/packaging process, or we need to ask upstream.

Resources from my efforts:
https://github.com/TrechNex/gimp-macos-build
https://github.com/TrechNex/gimp-osx
https://github.com/TrechNex/glimpse-mac-build (furthest I got with this)
https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Hacking:Building

[TrechNex]

If there is no advance on this then we may need to initially release on Windows and Linux, then delay the Mac port until this is resolved.

Alternatively, we could just direct them to SeaShore, which is basically a native Mac port of the upstream code: http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/meet-seashore-free-image-editor-for-macos https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seashore/id1448648921?mt=12

[TrechNex]

Cleared milestone & close issue as we're dropping support for MacOS at the current time. We will re-open it when we determine how to build the code and establish how the result will be maintained over the longer term.