[Openmcl-devel] Is it possible to successfully submit to Mac App Store?

[R. Matthew Emerson]

On Oct 12, 2012, at 12:39 PM, Frederick Cowan <cowan at mac.com> wrote:

> I've got an app to build.  I want this to run on a big screen so I'm targeting the Mac.  I'm a iOS developer so I could do it with Objective-C and pure Xcode.  I'd like to try building this with CCL, but only if I can get it in the Mac App Store and sell it.
> 
> Anybody know for sure if this is or isn't possible?

We at Clozure wondered if this was possible.  In order to find out, I wrote an application called Picture Window in CCL.  It was accepted to the Mac App Store.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/picture-window/id507262984?mt=12

However, this was before Apple required all Mac App Store applications to be sandboxed.  I haven't tried to make Picture Window run in a sandbox yet, so I'm not entirely sure what will be involved with that.

It will be necessary to figure out how to assign entitlements by using /usr/bin/codesign.  This shouldn't be too hard:  the obvious thing to do is to write a little sandboxed app using Xcode, and then read the build transcript to see how Xcode does it.  (The man page for codesign mentions an -entitlements option.)

Once that's done, it's time to run the sandboxed app, see what breaks, fix it, and repeat as necessary.

So, that's a long way of saying that I don't know for sure if it's possible to write a *sandboxed* app in CCL and have it accepted into the Mac App Store.  It was definitely possible before Apple started requiring that apps be sandboxed.