Xcode Template for Pythonista

[mrcoxall]

I am trying to upload a Pythonista project to the Apple App Store.
I have tried many, many time and keep getting code signing errors.
I am using Xcode 8.2.1
So this is what I have done:

Started with new Xcode Swift single view project, archived it and was able to submit it to the App Store. So my certificates are all working. I downloaded the Xcode template and then archived it. When I submit to Apple, it hangs on the code signing for a really long time and then comes back with this error:

ERROR ITMS-90035: "Invalid Signature. Code object is not signed at all. Make sure you have signed your application with a distribution certificate, not an ad hoc certificate or a development certificate. Verify that the code signing settings in Xcode are correct at the target level (which override any values at the project level). Additionally, make sure the bundle you are uploading was built using a Release target in Xcode, not a Simulator target. If you are certain your code signing settings are correct, choose "Clean All" in Xcode, delete the "build" directory in the Finder, and rebuild your release target. For more information, please consult https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Security/Conceptual/CodeSigningGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html"

The only thing I can figure out is that it seems to be trying to code sign the PythonistaKit.framework and does not seem to be able to. I can see "PythonistaKit.framework (0 Entitlements), just before I validate it.

Wondering if anyone else is able to reproduce this error, or even better have a fix to the problem.
Thanks

[TheRealBret]

I spoke too soon. I had to upgrade Xcode because of iOS11 compatibility, and now I'm back to getting the code signing errors for all the .py files, even if they have the texinfo header. Building apps for local distribution works fine, I just can't sign the code as part of the validation process for the App Store.

[TheRealBret]

Looks like the texinfo hack needs to be modified. The code signing process uses file(1) to check the type of file in the package, and file(1) identifies executable code by checking against different file types and scoring each file type. Apple modified the matching "magic" for python to look for python keywords like "def", "import", "try", "except", etc and each use gives a higher score to python. So for the tex info hack to work, it needs to occur more frequently than the python keywords. Some files just need a single texinfo line; other files need 400+ copies of the texinfo line (some of the python checks only examine the first 4096 characters of the file). Its easy to modify the script above to accomplish this, but hardly elegant.

Hopefully somebody will find this useful and find a simple fix.... like perhaps there's another file type that short-circuits the checking magic? Also, the Apple developer documentation say that script files could go into a specially named subfolder, which would be much simpler, but I've haven't gotten this to work.

[JonB]

out of curiosity, is file used locally, or on the server?
Couldn't you use th older file version for identifying text files?

[jumpbeen]

@JonB said:

out of curiosity, is file used locally, or on the server?

Yes, It's locally.
@TheRealBret
You can replace older version of 'usr/bin/file' and 'usr/share/file' to fix it, if your mac os version has updated to 10.13.

[TheRealBret]

Thanks. Will give it a try and test an upload to TestFlight too.

[sreyemnayr]

Here's the re-worked script, which throws as many of those dummies at the top of each file as it needs to stop the madness.

EDIT: There are some problems with this method as well, as it bounces the lines indicating the encoding style, which breaks a bunch of stuff... I ended up having to regex replace them back to the top, but will work this script out to do it better later. Just be aware that this will happen!

# Change these:
pylib_path1 = '/path/to/PythonistaKit.framework/pylib'
pylib_path2 = '/path/to/PythonistaKit.framework/pylib_ext'

import shutil
import os
import subprocess

def check_is_executable(file_path):
    file_output = subprocess.check_output(['file', file_path])
    if 'executable' in file_output:
        return True, file_output
    return False, file_output

def fix_executable(file_path):
    with open(file_path, 'r') as f:
        source = f.read()
    with open(file_path, 'w') as f:
        f.write('#\input texinfo\n' + source)
    is_executable, out = check_is_executable(file_path)
    return not is_executable

def fix_pylib(pylib_path, dry_run=False):
    for path, dirs, files in os.walk(pylib_path):
        for filename in files:
            full_path = full_path = os.path.join(path, filename)
            is_executable, file_output = check_is_executable(full_path)
            if is_executable:
                extension = os.path.splitext(full_path)[1].lower()
                if extension == '.py' or extension == '.pym' or filename == 'command_template':
                    if dry_run:
                        print '### Executable found: %s' % (filename,)
                    else:
                        print 'Fixing %s...' % (filename,)
                        fixed = False
                        counter = 0
                        while not fixed:
                            fixed = fix_executable(full_path)
                            counter = counter + 1

                        print 'Fixed with '+str(counter)+' dummy lines.'
                else:
                    print '### Executable found, but does not seem to be Python code: %s' % (full_path,)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    fix_pylib(pylib_path1)
    fix_pylib(pylib_path2)```

[peterdougstuart]

Hi @sreyemnayr, just tried your script, but still getting an error on upload to app store. Any other ideas or refinements to your script?

[peterdougstuart]

I'm making a bit of progress:

• My original error related to the future.py file in pylib, after running the script the Xcode error changed.
• I noticed that after running the above script the specific file that I was getting the 'Invalid Signature' error on had change to pylib/compiler/init.py. I had a look at that file and it didn't have a #\input texinfo up the top so I added it manually.
• I then reran the script and the error changed to pylib/compiler/ast.py This did have lots of #\input texinfo, so I copy and pasted all of them to double the amount of #\input texinfo lines at the top of the file. This seemed to satisfy Xcode.
• I then reran the script and the error changed one of the files in pylib/ctypes/test. I just deleted the whole pylib/ctypes/test folder.
• I than reran the script and the error changed to pylib/dateutil/READEME. I deleted the README file and the NEWS file while I was at it.
• I than reran the script and the error changes to pylib/site-packages/dropbox/init.py. As I'm not using dropbox in my app I just deleted the dropbox folder.
• I then had errors on pylib/site-packages/twitter.py, webbrowser.py, xmltodict.py and ui.py. They all had just one #\input texinfo line so I inserted an extra 1000 #\input texinfo lines at the top of each.
• I then had remaining errors in the files in pylib_ext/ so I added about #\input texinfo lines at the top of each.
• Finally my app submitted successfully!!!!

I must confess I really don't understand all of this. Feels like there's got to be a better way....

Thanks to @sreyemnayr for posting the script as I would not have solved this without it.

[RomSpy]

@peterdougstuart any chance you would be willing to share your updated template?

[ccc]

@sreyemnayr could you please update your script to work in Python 3?

[ccc]

if extension == '.py' or extension == '.pym'
# can be shortened to:
if extension in ('.py', '.pym')

[peterdougstuart]

Sorry for delay responding....

Happy to share @RomSpy, but please note that my templates have been minimized to my project i.e. deleted lots of modules I'm not using. Therefore it may not work for your project. You might be better off following the principles of steps I outlined above.

If you are still interested in my templates can you send me a PM on twitter (same handle as here) and I'll send you a zip or something. Alternatively point me to somewhere I can upload the files and I'll do so.

[RomSpy]

@peterdougstuart thank you for the offer. I ended up doing what you did and removing everything I wasn't using and then running the script above. I was able to successfully update my app in the store using that method in addition to your added steps. Thanks again.

[xino386]

@peterdougstuart
Hi, i am interested in your templates which is submitted to itunesConnect successfully, can you send me a zip ?

[peterdougstuart]

Hi @xino386 can you PM on twitter and I’ll send you a zip of my scripts (same handle as here). Note that my scripts have been trimmed down to match the subset of the libraries used in my app so you might be better off following the steps above to get it to work.

[stepper]

@omz
I have a succes storey with your fix script (June 19/18). Here’s what I did. Pasted approx 400 #\input texinfo ‘s into a text file. Pasted the contents (all one line, no line breaks) into your script as a string (replacing the existing ‘#\input texinfo’. Changed the folder permissions for the two lib folders to read/write (temporarily).ran your script. It fixed all but a half dozen of the files. Went into the folders manually. The unchanged files stood out cause they didn’t have today’s date of modification. Manually pasted in the approx 400 from the original text file into those few.
Successfully uploaded to app connect where my app is now in Beta on test flight.
Thank You very much!

[omz]

@stepper That's interesting, though I've found a better solution recently: You can add something like #import pythonista as the first line, and it'll be recognized as Objective-C source code (which isn't directly executable, so it doesn't cause issues with code signing).

[RomSpy]

@omz
Any chance we will see an updated template that uses all the great new features in version 3?

[omz]

@RomSpy Yes, that's something I'd really like to do soon, and I've already done some of the work required, but it's still kind of a mess.

[bg2b]

Is there an up-to-date summary of the idea for packaging up a Pythonista project to make an app? I see that the template linked from

https://forum.omz-software.com/topic/1911/new-xcode-template-beta

doesn't exist anymore, and I'm not sure where to begin learning.