Notarize app for Catalina

[quote=459950:@Craig Grech]Thanks finally managed to get the app wrapped but it fails on the Notorize upload with -
Could not connect to Apple’s web service.
Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.[/quote]
There have been reports about Apple’s service going in and out of operation this week. My guess is that they didn’t prepare enough hardware for the amount of people that are using it, and are struggling to keep up with demand.

I was able to push through a couple of small apps yesterday; taking about 5 minutes each time. I’m also in Asia, so my mornings are the about the same time as US evenings. My evenings are about the same time as Europe mornings.

As for needing an active account, I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that it’s probably required to be valid if you want to use Apple’s Notarization service (quite frankly, you need it for public distribution of apps). If you have apps in the App Store and your account lapses (even if your code signing identities are valid), they pull your apps from sale.

See https://developer.apple.com/system-status/ looks like another outage

Thanks I suppose I better renew my Developer certificate anyway. It’s a lot of money just to satisfy gatekeeper.

Funny, people say why do you need to use Xojo to create apps for Mac when they supply XCode free with the operating system?
Well for one thing it isn’t free to use if you have to pay an annual fee of AU149 just so people can use your apps on their system.

[quote=459962:@Craig Grech]Funny, people say why do you need to use Xojo to create apps for Mac when they supply XCode free with the operating system?
Well for one thing it isn’t free to use if you have to pay an annual fee of AU149 just so people can use your apps on their system.[/quote]
Technically you can still develop for your machine with out paying anything extra than the cost of the hardware. However if you want to distribute your application, you are now locked in to paying at minimum $20 a year (although I suspect Notarization will require that you keep your developer account up to date).

I remember when a developer account at Apple cost $500 a year. I got some pretty expensive t-shirts from that. However I’d also save $600 a year on Apple hardware purchases, so it made it desirable to update more regularly.

Can you elaborate on that please? I’m thinking of making some of my apps available directly on the web (no MAS for now), but I’m not sure what’s required.

What Sam means is you need to pay 99$ for a certificate that is valid for 5 years. So it’s 99/5 $.

Ah, I see. Darn, thought I’d found a bargain :slight_smile:

I understand that renewing your membership every 5 years is no problem but now you need to have a current annual membership if you want to notorize your app so it’s USD100 per year.
Anyway still can’t get it to upload with App Wrapper -
1 package(s) were not uploaded because they had problems:
/var/folders/4b/vr48fhsd7xx8873q6lcjp9vw0000gn/T/F2628871-400A-4D51-B3F7-A800ABA10DE5/Untitled.itmsp - Error Messages:
Could not connect to Apple’s web service.
Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.

I can’t see anything in diagnostics relating to connectivity.

At this point, I can’t say for sure. I honestly expect it to be this way, but who knows I might be surprised! Hence why I used minimum in my sentence.

[quote=460108:@Craig Grech]Anyway still can’t get it to upload with App Wrapper -
1 package(s) were not uploaded because they had problems:
/var/folders/4b/vr48fhsd7xx8873q6lcjp9vw0000gn/T/F2628871-400A-4D51-B3F7-A800ABA10DE5/Untitled.itmsp - Error Messages:
Could not connect to Apple’s web service.
Communication error. Please use diagnostic mode to check connectivity.
I can’t see anything in diagnostics relating to connectivity.[/quote]
I think that this is most likely another outage; they’re happening a lot this week. Yup; there we go, another outage. System Status - Apple Developer

Yes I see outages but I’m not sure that’s the problem since I haven’t been able to make a connection at all during my whole App Wrapper trial. I did see an option to change the app-specific password at one stage and I’m thinking this might be the problem with connecting but I can’t find it anywhere in the App-Wrapper interface now.

The main reason as to why I believe that this is a connection problem is because the error message from Apple is regarding a connection issue, typically when the password is incorrect, the error message indicates this.

To change the password from within App Wrapper, click on the “Edit” button next to where you select the Apple submission account in the “Notarize” window, which if not opened, can be by selecting “Notarize” from the Tools menu.

It might well be another issue between the connection from the software to Apple’s end. I don’t know what port or address it uses as that’s not directly available to me. Using Little Snitch it reports contentdelivery.itunes.apple.com (17.110.232.68), Port https (443).

I can also extend the App Wrapper trial for you.

Is this any help? (log after cannot connect error)

[2019-10-26 13:08:23 AEST] ERROR: Could not retrieve remote configuration details.
[2019-10-26 13:08:23 AEST] ERROR: An exception has occurred: Unable to tunnel through proxy. Proxy returns “HTTP/1.1 502 Bad Gateway”
[2019-10-26 13:08:23 AEST] DEBUG: java.io.IOException: Unable to tunnel through proxy. Proxy returns “HTTP/1.1 502 Bad Gateway”
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.doTunneling(HttpURLConnection.java:2124)

[quote=460334:@Craig Grech]Is this any help? (log after cannot connect error)

[2019-10-26 13:08:23 AEST] ERROR: Could not retrieve remote configuration details.
[2019-10-26 13:08:23 AEST] ERROR: An exception has occurred: Unable to tunnel through proxy. Proxy returns “HTTP/1.1 502 Bad Gateway”
[2019-10-26 13:08:23 AEST] DEBUG: java.io.IOException: Unable to tunnel through proxy. Proxy returns “HTTP/1.1 502 Bad Gateway”
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.doTunneling(HttpURLConnection.java:2124)[/quote]
502 error normally indicates that there’s an issue between your machine and the destination server. Do you have a VPN? You can try restarting your Mac, your router, changing the DNS on the router from the ISP supplied ones to a third party DNS supplier.

An easy way to test is to use your phone as a hotspot, then try again using your phone connection.

Finally packaged and notorized with App Wrapper.
Lots of anomalies with my machine since I only use an old Macbook to compile my Mac distributions and it was very buggy so the blame goes rightfully on my shoulders.
I don’t know what was causing it but I couldn’t connect to iCloud on this machine no matter what I did.
The password was correct but it was stuck in an endless loop of asking for the password, even though the wrong password would bring up an incorrect password message.
In frustration I went into the Library and moved my whole Keychain folder to backups and restarted allowing the program to create a new folder. Now I can get into iCloud but lots of other things stopped working.
Re-download Xcode 10.1 (highest operating system is High Sierra on this old machine). Went into account and downloaded keys.
Recreate and download all certificates from developer site. I have now used maximum of 2 for some types.
Create new app specific passwords.
Wrap app again.
BOOM! it uploaded and was approved in about 2 minutes.
So happy. Bought your program immediately.

Thanks a lot, Sam! I tried this now with another project for this customer which currently does not use a DMG and I finally succeeded.

But now for the other project (you remember: The one with the helper issues):
I noticed that while AppWrapper gives me a code sign error, I can still use its wrapped result and feed DMG Canvas with it (I wonder if that’s necessary and I could simply use the latter one for code signing this project), and it succeeds.
It does not succeed in notarizing because DMG Canvas currently does not seem to have a field for the itc_provider string. AppWrapper does, and I wonder if there is a workflow to automate this: Use DMG Canvas for code signing and have AppWrapper do the notarization of the DMG?

Forget it. I should have used Canvas’s update checker first …

What an absolute pain in the butt.
Same as with iOS, I wish that signing and notarizing was integrated in the build process in Xojo.
So many of us spend too much time chasing things like when our time could be better spent refining features of our software.