Is Linkback abandoned? [No; here's how to make it work with sandboxing!]
 

I am curious whether Linkback will be developed any further. It is invaluable in one of my applications. WRT to the search for general ways to handle sandbox restrictions (last post here ... [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=25007&highlight=linkback[/url]), even an updated Linkback framework that requires a developer to set entitlements on an app-by-app would be much welcomed.

Is Linkback truly to be considered "abandoned"?

--
JJW

One man's temporary is another man's forever it seems.

Especially when the gurus in command are silent on the topic.

--
JJW

Sorry I didn't see this sooner! [URL="mailto:omnisource@omnigroup.com?subject=LinkBack"]Sending us email[/URL] or submitting a github issue against our [URL="https://github.com/omnigroup/LinkBack"]LinkBack code[/URL] would probably get our attention more quickly.

We're continuing to use LinkBack in our sandboxed apps.

For now, we're just using a temporary entitlement to look up Mach ports in known apps so that this works with existing code:

[CODE]
<key>com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name</key>
<array>
<!-- LinkBack needs to be able to talk to mach ports for other apps that use it -->
<string>com.omnigroup.OmniGrafflePro:OmniGraffle</string>
<string>com.omnigroup.OmniGrafflePro.MacAppStore:OmniGraffle</string>
<string>com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle:OmniGraffle</string>
<string>com.omnigroup.OmniGraffle.MacAppStore:OmniGraffle</string>
<string>com.freeverse.Lineform:inform</string>
<string>fr.chachatelier.pierre.LaTeXiT:LaTeXiT</string>
</array>
[/CODE]

Looking ahead, we should probably replace named Mach ports with local sockets and Bonjour lookups, but that change will require coordination among all the apps which support LinkBack.

Thanks. Sent a link to Curio developer about this. LinkBack is much appreciated between Curio and LaTexiT and OmniFocus. I would hate to loose this valuable tool!

Hi Ken,

Are those entitlements something that can be modified by end users? Seems not from what I can gather.

I was playing around, making a trivial LinkBack app to do image skewing. But it fails to plug into OmniGraffle 6. (Works fine in OmniGraffle 5.)

denty.

[QUOTE=denty;128828]Are those entitlements something that can be modified by end users? Seems not from what I can gather.[/QUOTE]

Developers can update the entitlements of the app using the "codesign" command-line tool. For example, if I wanted to add org.example.MyExampleApp:MyExampleApp to OmniGraffle's entitlements (making a copy of the app as Test-OmniGraffle.app just in case something breaks), I'd do this:

[CODE]ditto OmniGraffle.app Test-OmniGraffle.app
codesign --display --entitlements :- Test-OmniGraffle.app > /tmp/OmniGraffle.entitlements.plist
defaults write /tmp/OmniGraffle.entitlements.plist com.apple.security.temporary-exception.mach-lookup.global-name -array-add "org.example.MyExampleApp:MyExampleApp"
plutil -convert xml1 /tmp/OmniGraffle.entitlements.plist
codesign --force --sign "Mac Developer:" --entitlements /tmp/OmniGraffle.entitlements.plist Test-OmniGraffle.app[/CODE]

Hope this helps!

(But you can see why I'm thinking we should ultimately switch LinkBack over to using some other communication mechanism which doesn't require app-specific entitlements!)

Thanks Ken!

That's great.

denty.