Problems signing and notarizing a plugin

I'm developing a plugin for a 3rd party app that consists of a bundle with a custom file extension (not 'app', specifically.)

I'm running into issues with getting the plugin to load when the host app starts. It works fine on the system the plugin is compiled on, but on any other machine I get the "apple can't check app for malicious software" dialog.

spctl -vvv --assess --type exec <my plugin> shows:

rejected (the code is valid but does not seem to be an app)

Other plugins for the same app produce the same output from spctl. This makes sense - a plugin is not an app.

Aside from that, all the signing, notarization and stapling steps outlined here (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution/customizing_the_notarization_workflow) complete with no issues.

Any ideas on how to get the plugin to load? How are shared libraries supposed to be signed and notarized, anyway? The documentation mostly assumes that people are interested in notarizing apps and there's very little mention of anything that's not an app.

Thanks,

Ori Pessach

This makes sense - a plugin is not an app.

Right. spctl is not able to offer useful info into this. Honestly, I don’t use spctl for notarisation testing at all. Rather, I use the process described in Testing a Notarised Product.

The documentation mostly assumes that people are interested in notarizing apps

Well, the official documentation (-: The droid you’re looking for here is:

These posts don’t assume that all the world’s an app (-:

Assuming your plug-in is signed and notarised, it should pass Gatekeeper. If it doesn’t, debugging that can be kinda tricky. I have a whole cluster of posts that discuss various potential issues, rooted at Resolving Trusted Execution Problems.

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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
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Problems signing and notarizing a plugin
 
 
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