Mac OS X's Gatekeeper functionality prevents users from launching applications that haven't been code-signed, in order to help keep their computers secure. Firefox and Thunderbird releases are both signed before shipping; this article describes the process.
Signing Mozilla apps without the signing server
Sep 26, 2011 When Apple released Mac OSX Lion, I refreshed the Firefox homepage for the entire day because I believed that would release a new version with Lion compatibility on that same day. Guess what, they still haven’t. We are at 6.0.2 and Firefox still doesn’t have a ‘Full Screen’ option. Chrome has it, Safari had it from day one on Lion (heh. Apr 29, 2016 Mozilla today announced that it will end Firefox support for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, OS X 10.7 Lion, and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in August 2016. If the browser no longer opens and you need to reinstall Firefox, you can make a backup of your bookmarks straight from your hard drive. Firefox stores your bookmarks in a hidden folder on Mac OS X. To view the folder, you need to use a special keystroke when opening the Library menu.
Firefox and Thunderbird are built using Mozilla's Release Automation infrastructure. On Mac OS X, part of this infrastructure is automatic signing of the '.app' folder using Apple's
codesign tool. For projects that don't use Mozilla's Release Automation and would like to be signed for secure launching on OS 10.8 Mountain Lion and later, this guide should provide some insight into how to make sure applications are signed correctly using Apple's codesign tool. Apple's Code Signing Guide is also a good resource on the subject.
Getting a signing certificate![]() ![]()
In order to code-sign an application, you need a signing certificate.
While testing and debugging
For test and debug purposes, the easiest way to get a signing certificate is to use Apple's Keychain feature to create one. There are good instructions available under 'To use the Certificate Assistant to Create a self-signed signing identity'.
For release
Creating a Developer ID requires a paid Apple Developer Account. Once you have that you can do the following to create your ID:
The codesign tool
Apple provides a tool called
codesign ; this command-line application is used to add a signature to an application bundle. The man page for codesign is available online, or you can simply type 'man codesign ' in a Terminal window. The main options of note are:
Putting it all together, you'll wind up using a command similar to the one below to sign your app. You'll of course need to change the signing ID, keychain, bundle path, and requirements.
Or if you're using v2 signing, the command might look like this:
Depending on your keychain preferences, the
codesign command may display a popup asking for the password for the specified keychain. Once the application has been signed, the signature of an application bundle can be validated by calling:
Mozilla Firefox For Mac Mountain Lion Os
Where
Application.app is the application bundle you wish to validate. The folder will fail to validate if any of these cases occur (there may be other cases not listed here):
The CodeResources file
This file is located in your application's bundle at
Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources . If you don't provide one, codesign will automatically generate it. However, to modify Apple's automatic signing process (for example, to exclude a file or folder), you'll need to provide this file.. Once the application bundle is signed, this file will contain the hashes/checksums of all files that are included in the signature. If any file is subsequently changed, the folder will no longer validate.
The
CodeResources file used to sign official Firefox and Thunderbird builds is available in mozilla-central. For more details on using the CodeResources file, refer to the Code Resources section on Erick Dransch's blog post about code signing.
See alsoMozilla Firefox For Macbook Pro
Some good resources for code signing for Mac OS X are available at:
Mozilla Firefox For Mac Mountain Lion Installer
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |