Issues Signing .app with Developer ID Certificate — Missing Private Key and Pipeline Concerns

I’m having issues trying to codesign a .app file. We generated the Developer ID Application certificate using the organization owner’s account. I downloaded the certificate to my Mac and imported it into my keychain, but when I run the codesign command below, I get the following error.

Could you help me? What am I doing wrong? Is there any other way to sign the .app executable?

From what I’ve seen in other posts, it looks like the certificate needs to have a private key, but the certificate I download from the developer portal doesn’t include the key. Also, about exporting it as a .p12 — I couldn’t quite understand if that’s considered a safe practice, since the organization owner’s private key would be included in this certificate that we plan to use in our pipeline.

Answered by DTS Engineer in 838418022
but the certificate I download from the developer portal doesn’t include the key.

Correct. What you have a certificate, what you need is a digital identity. This is a common pitfall for folks using Developer ID signing because of the permissions involved. I talk about it in some detail in The Care and Feeding of Developer ID.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

but the certificate I download from the developer portal doesn’t include the key.

Correct. What you have a certificate, what you need is a digital identity. This is a common pitfall for folks using Developer ID signing because of the permissions involved. I talk about it in some detail in The Care and Feeding of Developer ID.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Issues Signing .app with Developer ID Certificate — Missing Private Key and Pipeline Concerns
 
 
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