fix bitcoin-qt app categorization on apple silicon

jarolrod commented at 3:26 am on September 5, 2021: member

System Information contains many insights into various aspects of your macOS system; the ‘Applications’ tab contains info on apps. Starting with macOS 11, the ‘kind’ column under the ‘Applications’ tab started displaying the CPU architecture of the application. The options are; apple silicon, intel, universal. Previously, the kind column indicated where the application originated. The change was made to conveniently determine if the app installed was built to run natively on the new M1 CPU or an intel app that will run under rosetta. Of course, there are several other tools to confirm this; the ‘kind’ column provides a user-friendly way.

We expect that Bitcoin Core compiled, built, and deployed on an intel CPU will be classified as Intel. Similarly, we expect that if this is done on an M1 mac, the resulting app is classified as Apple Silicon. In reality, Bitcoin-qt built and deployed on an M1 mac will be classified as IOS. This behavior is incorrect and should be fixed.

We fix this by setting the CFBundleSupportedPlatforms in our info.plist to the value of MacOSX. In doing this, we are telling macOS, “We do not support IOS; stop it!”.

Tested and confirmed that this is a no-op on macOS < 11.

On #22546 Branch	#22546 + PR Branch

To Test: For testing, our base branch will be #22546. Please perform the following steps on the base branch and then the base branch with the commit from this PR cherry-picked onto it:

Have an M1 mac
Compile and deploy bitcoin
Open up the deployed *.dmg, installed the bundled app
Eject the bitcoin dmg that should currently be mounted
Navigate to System Information -> Applications
- Click on the top-left Apple icon
- Click about this mac
- Click on the ‘Storage’ tab
- Click on the ‘Manage…’ button
- On the left, click on ‘Applications’
- Sort by Name
Look for the Bitcoin Core application
- Base Branch: The kind column should state that this application is of type IOS
- PR Branch: The kind column should state that this application is of type Apple Silicon

Note: Intel users on at least macOS 11 can help test by confirming that the application still shows up as kind=Intel

jarolrod added the label Bug on Sep 5, 2021

jarolrod added the label macOS on Sep 5, 2021

hebasto commented at 10:19 am on September 5, 2021: member

Concept ACK.

I failed to find CFBundleSupportedPlatforms in Apple’s docs (e.g., here and here).

jarolrod commented at 4:05 pm on September 5, 2021: member

@hebasto The usage of CFBundleSupportedPlatforms was done through deductive reasoning. I went through the info.plist of other applications installed on my machine. For the most part, those who were correctly categorized as Apple Silicon included this key. I had one app, besides Bitcoin Core, that was incorrectly categorized as IOS; this other app lacked the CFBundleSupportedPlatforms key.

This key is not documented properly, but a google search and the info.plist of installed applications will show that it is used in production quite ubiquitously. Using a key that is not properly documented can have negative consequences, especially down the line. I’m open to other approaches!

Here’s a qt bug that mentions this key: QTBUG-75917 The linked comment states “CFBundleSupportedPlatforms appears to be needed for MacOS deployment as well.”

Here we have a qt bug that mentions that QTCreator leaves out the “important” CFBundleSupportedPlatforms key, while it is automatically filled in by Xcode: QTBUG-74872

jarolrod commented at 10:31 pm on September 12, 2021: member

cc @fanquake: can I get your opinion on this?

fanquake commented at 5:31 am on September 13, 2021: member

can I get your opinion on this?

Using CFBundleSupportedPlatforms to get the macOS app categorized / recognized correctly by the OS seems ok.

hebasto commented at 6:54 am on September 13, 2021: member

I’ve checked out multiple non-Apple sources, including stackoverflow.com and other projects on GitHub. And I agree that CFBundleSupportedPlatforms is a valid key, and it is required to recognize an app in a right way.

Why not making this PR independent of https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/22546?

qt: fix bitcoin-qt app categorization on apple silicon

On master, the deployed bitcoin-qt application is categorized as an IOS application.
This is obviously incorrect, and the built executable is not an IOS executable.
To fix this, we set the CFBundleSupportedPlatforms key in our info.plist

3765c486ef

jarolrod force-pushed on Sep 13, 2021

jarolrod commented at 9:22 am on September 13, 2021: member

Updated from a03a1a6 -> 3765c48 (pr418.01, pr418.02, diff)

Changes: drop commits from #22546 to address @hebasto comment.

hebasto approved

hebasto commented at 11:42 am on September 13, 2021: member

ACK 3765c486ef57001d4e313782bf16a69b6988da33

Guix build:

0$ env HOSTS='x86_64-apple-darwin18' ./contrib/guix/guix-build
1$ find guix-build-$(git rev-parse --short=12 HEAD)/output/ -type f -print0 | env LC_ALL=C sort -z | xargs -r0 sha256sum
2f59636390f1b6c1e51d1c3f1ec5896bfe5ffa65c97f690675e1a1ced9cb6b59e  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/dist-archive/bitcoin-3765c486ef57.tar.gz
32476e872eefe3d2733689fb841630f647356f84ca3231ad8b5042f06ec01c8ef  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/SHA256SUMS.part
4eda7eb51866354e5ca2566596fc55fe9ee7b423b3b2ab7af869908751bccfffa  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/bitcoin-3765c486ef57-osx-unsigned.dmg
563c4e2c58cb94026dd564e8fae17e5d7a6a4ff7ffa2bc4501239f86cdbc3b849  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/bitcoin-3765c486ef57-osx-unsigned.tar.gz
6cfda44bb5e56b2bca46024b545cd28b5cc6053a826f9f667da9c732aaf4d8afb  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/bitcoin-3765c486ef57-osx64.tar.gz

jarolrod commented at 3:38 pm on September 13, 2021: member

GUIX hashes, mine match @hebasto

0$ find guix-build-$(git rev-parse --short=12 HEAD)/output/ -type f -print0 | env LC_ALL=C sort -z | xargs -r0 sha256sum
1
2f59636390f1b6c1e51d1c3f1ec5896bfe5ffa65c97f690675e1a1ced9cb6b59e  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/dist-archive/bitcoin-3765c486ef57.tar.gz
32476e872eefe3d2733689fb841630f647356f84ca3231ad8b5042f06ec01c8ef  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/SHA256SUMS.part
4eda7eb51866354e5ca2566596fc55fe9ee7b423b3b2ab7af869908751bccfffa  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/bitcoin-3765c486ef57-osx-unsigned.dmg
563c4e2c58cb94026dd564e8fae17e5d7a6a4ff7ffa2bc4501239f86cdbc3b849  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/bitcoin-3765c486ef57-osx-unsigned.tar.gz
6cfda44bb5e56b2bca46024b545cd28b5cc6053a826f9f667da9c732aaf4d8afb  guix-build-3765c486ef57/output/x86_64-apple-darwin18/bitcoin-3765c486ef57-osx64.tar.gz

hebasto merged this on Sep 14, 2021

hebasto closed this on Sep 14, 2021

sidhujag referenced this in commit 366cfea7b2 on Sep 15, 2021

bitcoin-core locked this on Sep 14, 2022

fix bitcoin-qt app categorization on apple silicon #418

Guix build: