The first release could not be opened: macOS said "WarpEngine Store is damaged
and can't be opened. You should move it to the Bin."
Not a wording problem — an integrity one. electron-builder found no signing
identity and skipped signing, so the bundle kept only the linker's ad-hoc
signature on its main executable, with no resource seal. `codesign --verify` said
"code has no resources but signature indicates they must be present", and
Gatekeeper reports that as damaged and offers no way past it, unlike an
un-notarised app which can at least be approved.
`scripts/after-pack.js` now signs the bundle itself during packaging. Measured on
a copy unzipped from the artifact with the quarantine flag set by hand:
before code has no resources but signature indicates they must be present
after valid on disk; satisfies its Designated Requirement
and the identifier is ours rather than `Electron`. `syspolicy_check` is down to
its expected "adhoc signed" warning. A downloaded copy still has to be approved —
that is Gatekeeper policy for anything un-notarised, and notarisation needs a paid
Developer ID — so the README and the release notes lead with the one command that
does it.
Two smaller things the failure turned up:
- The self-test was passing silently. With a copy of the app already open, the
second process lost the single-instance lock and exited 0 with no output, which
reads exactly like success. It now uses its own user-data directory and skips
the lock, and it caught a real launch failure immediately afterwards.
- The README claimed right-click ▸ Open was enough. It was not, and I had not
checked it — replaced with what the measurements support.
v1.0.0's attachments are withdrawn rather than left downloadable.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The desktop store put the catalog on ordinary computers, and then asked people to
open a terminal — which on Windows is not even a workable ask, because the
installer is `curl … | sh`. This is the window: a grid of cards, one click to
install a title into the application menu, one to play it, one to remove it.
The CLI stays the product. Every action runs `desktop_store.py --json`, so there
is one catalog logic, one state file and one delete guard; the window never
touches the filesystem itself. That is also why the engine grew `--json` first
rather than this app growing a parser for prose.
It doubles as the Windows install path: with no store on the machine, the app
downloads the engine, the shared core and a config into the same folder the shell
installer would use — Node's https, no curl. An engine older than 1.1.0 cannot be
driven from a window, so the client checks the version and offers to refresh it
instead of failing on the first call.
Deliberate choices worth knowing:
- No renderer framework and no build step. Plain HTML, CSS and JS, one runtime
dependency. The whole UI is readable in one sitting.
- `contextIsolation` on, `nodeIntegration` off, `sandbox` on, a CSP that permits
only the app's own script and stylesheet plus images over HTTPS. The renderer
can do exactly what preload.js exposes and nothing else.
- English and Hungarian, following the system language. The CLIs and the docs stay
English; this is the one end-user surface where that is not enough.
- `ENGINES` is a list with one entry. The RetroArch store has the same command
shape, so adding it is an entry, not a rewrite.
Two ways to test it without a working installation in the way: `npm run smoke`
drives the bridge with no window at all, and `npm run uitest` loads the window
once and reports what rendered — the only way a renderer error would otherwise be
noticed, since the main process log stays empty. Both accept a sandbox store
through STORE_ROOT / SMOKE_HOME.
Verified on macOS arm64, including the packaged .app: the store is found, ten
titles list, a sync installs three, and the window renders them as installed with
their Play and Remove buttons. Linux and Windows are unproven, as they are for the
CLI itself.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
mr.zeroandClaude Opus 5