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by CJefferson 3391 days ago
> macOS has never been more stable or developer friendly

* I have to turn off gatekeeper to run unsigned apps.

* I can't write into /bin or /usr on my own machine without flipping some magic option

* I can't run gdb without some complicated signing dance I have to do every time I update it.

* I can't run dtrace without rebooting and switching some secret flag off. I have to tell other people to turn they same thing off so they can dtrace applications.

That's just straight off the top of my head. The dtrace and gdb things are particularly annoying, as it makes life harder for me to get other users to do simple debugging tasks, and there is no simple workaround, just complicated instructions.

2 comments

> I have to turn off gatekeeper to run unsigned apps.

Right-click on the unsigned app and select "Open". You only need to do this the first time you run the app.

If you're a developer or tester, this means every single time. Because every start is the first time for that build...

Regarding the gdb signing, it's painful. Even more so is the privilege escalation--it's impossible to debug over ssh with gdb or lldb since the GUI prompt is on a different machine. Not having the prompt in the terminal where the debugger is being run is asinine. I had to switch to debugging on FreeBSD to avoid the pain of all this; it's madness.

I agree this is annoying, but regarding gdb: lldb works fine, and it's not Apple's fault that gdb hasn't automated the complicated signing dance. In my experience, gdb is broken on macOS in several other ways too...