MacOS signing

[Alan Third]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2022 at 11:23:32PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   > It might be worth trying Jim's builds from
>   > https://github.com/jimeh/emacs-builds, as I understand it they're
>   > signed and so on, which might avoid some problems with running it.
> 
> Would some Mac expert please explain to me (off the list) what's
> going on here?

I'm not really up-to-date with the ins and outs of macOS's security
model, but as I understand it macOS expects applications to be
"signed" by some developer certificate provided by Apple.

This has never affected me because I always build my own Emacs and, at
least on the ancient version of macOS I'm running, self-built
applications are exempt from this.

There is some way to work around it. It used to be that you just had
to click through a security warning the first time the application
ran, but I think it's more complex now.

The reason I suggested the OP try Jim Myrhberg's builds over the
emacsformacosx.com ones is that not only are Jim's signed, but the
latter use a script to select and execute the Emacs binary, and that
seems to cause further trouble with the macOS security model.

Perhaps someone who actually uses macOS can explain this better.
-- 
Alan Third