mkgeorge7 3 days ago

Question for the devs in here...something I've been thinking about a lot recently. So I see that OP linked out to a public github repo...but when downloading the actual bundle, what's a quick way for me to determine that what I'm installing on my mac is actually the same as what's in the public repo? It's always seemed like a loophole to me ready for (potential) exploitation.

>> Ship project. >> Link out Github repo on the static site somewhere >> Gain trust instantly as users presume the public repo is what's used behind the scenes

Disclaimer: I'm a web dev and don't know a single thing about native MacOS software

2
felixrieseberg 3 days ago

Yeah, reproducible builds would be fantastic.

I sign my binaries on macOS with Apple codesign and notarize - and with Microsoft's Azure trusted signing for Windows. Both operating systems will actually show you a lot of warning dialogs before running anything unsigned. It's far from perfect - but I do wish we'd get more into the habit of signing binaries, even if open source.

dec0dedab0de 3 days ago

you don't, that is what reproducible builds are trying to solve, but even then it would still need someone to compile and check.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds