4 ms·

Putting it together: This is about submitting an app to the Mac App Store. Apple has had a requirement that apps not use private APIs for a while. It sounds l

by jmull 7y ago

Putting it together: This is about submitting an app to the Mac App Store. Apple has had a requirement that apps not use private APIs for a while. It sounds like Chromium, and hence Electron have had references to some private APIs for a while, but Apple has only recently started enforcing their requirement. (Or perhaps only recently started scanning for these particular APIs.) It’s a little painful for the developers for this to suddenly pop up like this, but it’s better than all Electron apps suddenly crashing one day, which would have happened sooner or later when one of these APIs changed or was dropped. The solution is a Chromium fix to avoid using these APIs, and an associated Electron release to incorporate the new version of Chromium.

duskwuff 7y ago
Judging by the history of a related issue on the Electron Github project [1], I suspect that Apple might have given the framework a two-month grace period starting in early September, and that just expired. Or the exception was supposed to be permanent, but something made it stop working. [1]: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/20027 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/20027
dragonwriter 7y ago
> It sounds like Chromium, and hence Electron have had references to some private APIs for a while I wonder if it has been that way in Chromium since Blink was WebKit and maintained largely by Apple with priority on performance on Apple platforms.
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  Apple's WebKit is safe to compile for their stores. The scripts and macros WebKit has disables use of private API unless you are compiling against Apple's internal SDKs. Edit: Sorry, no. Only JavaScriptCore is safe for stores, not the entire WebKit project.
rdevnull 7y ago
it seems that the scanning started these days. I had an app build a week ago and I didn't have any API error in the rejection.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
333c 7y ago
> This is about submitting an app to the Mac App Store. Indeed, and the article's title is confusingly wrong, as "Apple Store" refers to Apple's retail and online store that sells hardware.
stefan_ 7y ago
You are missing that Chromium uses these APIs in the first place because they offer better performance or necessary flexibility. Since Google doesn't distribute Chrome on the Mac App store, chances are they don't care about "fixing" Chromium to not use them. So, feel free to use Electron, just understand that your so easy to develop desktop app now hinges on the ability of a few unpaid developers (that's probably not you, or the "full-stack" people at Slack) to continuously keep track with the Chromium source and maintain their no doubt massive patches to its code to remove use of these private APIs.
Cub3 7y ago
This should get interesting when apps like Slack / Spotify need to ship their next update, I wonder how they will workaround this issue

by jmull 7y ago

duskwuff 7y ago

Judging by the history of a related issue on the Electron Github project [1], I suspect that Apple might have given the framework a two-month grace period starting in early September, and that just expired. Or the exception was supposed to be permanent, but something made it stop working. [1]: https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/20027 https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/20027

dragonwriter 7y ago

> It sounds like Chromium, and hence Electron have had references to some private APIs for a while I wonder if it has been that way in Chromium since Blink was WebKit and maintained largely by Apple with priority on performance on Apple platforms.

LeoNatan25 7y ago
Apple's WebKit is safe to compile for their stores. The scripts and macros WebKit has disables use of private API unless you are compiling against Apple's internal SDKs. Edit: Sorry, no. Only JavaScriptCore is safe for stores, not the entire WebKit project.

rdevnull 7y ago

it seems that the scanning started these days. I had an app build a week ago and I didn't have any API error in the rejection.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

333c 7y ago

> This is about submitting an app to the Mac App Store. Indeed, and the article's title is confusingly wrong, as "Apple Store" refers to Apple's retail and online store that sells hardware.

stefan_ 7y ago

You are missing that Chromium uses these APIs in the first place because they offer better performance or necessary flexibility. Since Google doesn't distribute Chrome on the Mac App store, chances are they don't care about "fixing" Chromium to not use them. So, feel free to use Electron, just understand that your so easy to develop desktop app now hinges on the ability of a few unpaid developers (that's probably not you, or the "full-stack" people at Slack) to continuously keep track with the Chromium source and maintain their no doubt massive patches to its code to remove use of these private APIs.

Cub3 7y ago

This should get interesting when apps like Slack / Spotify need to ship their next update, I wonder how they will workaround this issue