Hello all,
As a Mac administrator, I distribute apps like the Arduino IDE to the machines I manage. However, when I was preparing to update the IDE to the newest version on my machines, I discovered that something was wrong with the latest version.
When I tried to open it, it showed me an error saying that Apple couldn't verify the software, and the only option was to close or move to Trash. I found this suspicious, so I opened the Terminal to check the signing and notarization of the binary.
Here's the result that I found:
❯ codesign --verbose --verify Arduino\ IDE.app/Contents/MacOS/Arduino\ IDE
Arduino IDE.app/Contents/MacOS/Arduino IDE: bundle format is ambiguous (could be app or framework)
In subcomponent: /Users/nhubbard/Downloads/maclab/Arduino IDE.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework
❯ xcrun stapler validate Arduino\ IDE.app
Processing: /Users/nhubbard/Downloads/maclab/Arduino IDE.app
The validate action worked!
❯ spctl --assess --verbose Arduino\ IDE.app
Arduino IDE.app: rejected (bundle format is ambiguous (could be app or framework))
The Arduino IDE is built with Electron, and I found that some others were experiencing a similar issue, albeit with a much older version of macOS and Electron:
Is this normal for the Arduino IDE? I don't recall this being the case in the past. If this is a genuine problem, I'll hold off on updating the IDE on my managed machines until we can figure it out. I did verify that this issue was reproducible on my machine by deleting the version on my machine and re-downloading it from the Arduino website.
Thank you!