Can't be opened on MacOS

[troy-lamerton]

I would like to try BeeRef, but MacOS blocks it from opening due to 'security'.

Reproduce steps:

• download latest release zip for Mac
• unzip
• there is no .app file, so open a terminal and launch BeeRef-0.1.1 executable
• MacOS prevents it from running, so open Security & Privacy and click 'Allow anyway'
• launch BeeRef-0.1.1 executable again
• a new 'can't be opened' prompt appears:

A package called BeeRef.app would be most convenient for Mac users. Is it possible to build BeeRef.app when making a release?

[andrsd]

I had the same problem. I worked around this by cloning the repo, setting up virtual env, pulling in the dependencies and building the .app bundle via pyinstaller. This will give you a bundle that you can run and since you built it, it won't complain about any security, signing, etc.

Also, the new version of BeeRef migrated to a single binary release which will make it much easier to deploy to users (the new version has not been released, yet)

If you decide to build the bundle yourself, the steps to build BeeRef are here. I like to use the virtual env for each application so that it doesn't change my global environment. After cd beeref, you would need to do:

python3 -m venv env
env/bin/activate

and then, continue with pip install -e .

After installing requirements/dev.txt, jump directly to the build application step.

[rbreu]

Yes, the next release will have a bundled executable, since PyInstaller supports PyQt6 now. I've made a test build of the current development version here, feel free to try:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uu1k3edk2se3j7i/build-macos-10.15.zip?dl=1

The executable is missing the executable flag atm, so you have to set that yourself. I will fix that for the next release.

[rbreu]

The new executables are now released.