How are we meant to use TophatKit externally?

[luispadron]

I'm trying to build an external extension (for 2.0) that reaches our private build network, I'm able to produce a .appex using TophatKit but not sure what to do with that. Is this supposed to be installed somewhere?

[lfroms]

Hi @luispadron, extensions in macOS are supposed to be hosted within standalone macOS apps. The host macOS app need not necessarily be running, but its presence on the system exposes the extension to Tophat.

A good example of this would be Safari extensions, for example. They are installed from the App Store as applications and then provide the extension that they host back to Safari.

There are a few more details in TophatKit's README, but in summary, you must embed your extension in a standalone host application, even if it's just an empty shell.

[luispadron]

Ah interesting, thank you for the fast info!

I considered that but was confused what the bundle-id for the host application should be given the extension must be com.shopify.Tophat.extension right?

[lfroms]

The bundle ID of the extension can be whatever you want, only the EXExtensionPointIdentifier in the extension's Info.plist needs to be com.shopify.Tophat.extension.

The only reason you happen to see the same bundle ID used for the extensions built into Tophat is because they're embedded within Tophat itself, but this not required for external extensions. External extension bundle IDs only need to match the bundle ID of the parent application they are embedded in.

[luispadron]

Ah perfect that does seem to get it into the Extensions in settings:

However, it doesn't seem to be enable-able (doesn't show up in Tophat's settings either):

I also found that I could use:

pluginkit -a /path/to/extension.appex

To have it be installed without a hosting application

[luispadron]

Ah! Got it to show up by adding a static var settings: some View to my extension. Thanks for the help here!

[lfroms]

Ah! Got it to show up by adding a static var settings: some View to my extension. Thanks for the help here!

Shouldn't need to add a settings property unless your extension is SettingsProviding and requires a configurable UI. It should show up even without settings, like Tophat Core does.

Glad you have something working!

I also found that I could use:

pluginkit -a /path/to/extension.appex

That also works though it does make it more difficult to actually distribute the extension (potential Gatekeeper or other security issues, I imagine). Though if you can come up with a robust solution that can make this easy to install for your organization, then that's fine too.

[luispadron]

Right, I think I was missing some conformance to the TophatKit protocols which adding the settings view helped me resolve