Code signing about chrome-ssb-osx

[lhl]

Hmm, I haven't done much with the new Gatekeeper stuff honestly.
Reading the 1Password doc it seems like it might be doing some
additional checks like maybe a process name check? Mind renaming the
executable and seeing if that does anything? Another issue maybe is a
difference in the plist entries? Does Console.app show Gatekeeper
checks in the logs? Reading your output it doesn't actually seem to
say if its valid or not?

I wonder if this is something that the 1password guys might be able to
help with (maybe contacting support?

Have some deadlines but will give this a poke in a few days if nothing
turns up earlier...

[bradbatt]

Oh yeah … sorry… if you run codesign with the -vv flag it will tell you if the signature is valid or not.

For the original binary it says…

Google Chrome: valid on disk
Google Chrome: satisfies its Designated Requirement

and for the copied one (regardless of the name) it gives…

TestDev Chrome: invalid Info.plist (plist or signature have been modified)
In architecture: i386

I think 1Password is considering an option to allow browsers that aren't signed because this same thing happens with Chromium. Not sure that there is a workaround—at least not an easy one.

No worries…I hear you on the deadlines! I'll let you know if I figure anything else out on it.

[lhl]

OK, I did some poking w/ a bunch of variations - first trying to see if I could get a copy of the 'Google Chrome' executable to validate (symlinking the Info.plist, Versions, Resources, and _CodeSignature) but I couldn't. I don't know how the internals of the code signing check works, but trying to get the signature to validate would be the first step if you wanted to proceed along those tasks.

A couple workarounds:

1. Validation works if you symlink the 'Google Chrome' executable - of course, this leads to the issues in 10.9 in #22 so you'll just have to decide what's more important I guess.
2. I assume you can strip and sign the executable yourself if you are a Mac Developer and have a proper cert.

That being said, I'm not sure how useful 1Password is for an SSB if we're actually talking about "single site" browsing. Can you outline a use case?

If there isn't more activity I might close this as a "wontfix" and add this to the notes of the README...

[bradbatt]

Yeah…it doesn't really seem to affect anything else—at least that I can tell.

I probably use the SSB a little differently than some users—not always just for a single site. Sometimes for development, so that I can have a separate browser with only certain extensions loaded, for example. It segments things out a bit so that if the dev browser crashes it doesn't take down everything else that you have open.

You're probably right that it's probably more of a 1Password issue…and there are several Chromium users complaining about it to them because they have the same problem. So, I expect they may release an option that allows it to work in the near future.

[lhl]

Re:development w/ different extensions, have you used multiple chrome users as an alternative? http://www.chromium.org/user-experience/multi-profiles

That'll do everything you need for dev, although it won't have a separate task bar menu.

[lhl]

1Password 4.1.1 has: "Added preference to bypass browser code signing verification (Preferences > Advanced)." so closing the issue. Will add a note in the README about signing issues.

[dcunited001]

Oh thank you thank you thank you thank you so so much!!!!!!

I upgraded to OSX 10.9 in mid-February and was totally confused when my Chrome SSB's no longer worked the way they should. There were tons of problems: you had to open the browsers in a specific order and you could not set up a Quicksilver shortcut key to quickly open an SSB. My world was shattered.

I even created this post on the Google Chrome Product Forums last night: https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/chrome/EMWdaOqP9xg/sk9qF05b9jYJ

It's pretty hilarious and contains pretty involved prose.

Anyways, this fixes all those issues completely. I'll try to spread the word to some blogs as I can. Grateful that this script made it's way into an official repo so there's a good central place to discuss this!

[bradbatt]

I wonder about your statement “My fear though, is that I am maybe one of hundreds of nerds that uses a browser in this way.” … I kind of feel the same way! But I wonder how many people would use browsers like this if it wasn’t a total pain.

It makes it much easier to switch contexts. It’s absurd to have 100 tabs open in a single browser, with some things related, others completely unrelated. Plus, finding the correct tab is a huge pain.

I want to be able to keep open ZenDesk, Trello, and other apps and be able to instantly switch to them via ⌘-Tab or a keyboard shortcut.

Combining SSBs and Choosy makes things a lot easier and segmented. ZenDesk links open in the ZenDesk SSB, for example…rather in a random browser tab.

Plus, for things like development I want to be able to use some plugins, but not have those plugins in use all the time on every page if I am just reading Hacker News or whatever, because it slows everything down and makes it more prone to crashing. That’s another benefit of SSBs — if the browser crashes, only that browser crashes…not every single web page or web app that you have open.

It would be awesome to have some all-in-one solution that managed SSBs and the functionality of Choosy all in one place…allowed you to specify which extensions you wanted to use for each SSB, whether to share cookies between them, etc, etc.

[bradbatt]

BTW…Was checking out some of your setup in your repos…and the “Uber” key you have setup. Nice. We think a lot alike along those lines…I have done the same thing with Caps Lock for launching certain apps, including SSBs. Makes it a complete reflex rather than ⌘-Tabbing, as you pointed out.

If you don’t use it already, you definitely want to check out Keyboard Maestro … It blows the Mac system-wide keyboard shortcuts out of the water. Gives you tons and tons of control and allows you to limit shortcuts to certain apps, perform differently depending on the status of apps, create macros, move windows, etc, etc … pretty much limited by your imagination and ingenuity.

[dcunited001]

The Uber key is pretty nice, but comes at the cost of rewiring all your function keys. KeyRemap is pretty amazing in what it allows. Choosy is a great tool for making SSB's even more useful.

I haven't used Keyboard Maestro yet. Just checked it out, it looks great, thanks again!