Keen to help? Join as a collaborator!

[twostraws]

Hello! We've had almost 100 PRs merged into Control Room now, and I'm keen to get more people involved. If you've had a pull request merged in already and would like to help more, I'd be happy to add you as a collaborator so you can push code directly, merge PRs from others, and otherwise help provide direction for the project.

If you're interested, reply below with a link to your PR! It doesn't need to be huge – all help is welcome 🙌

[lechuckcaptain]

Would be happy to help! (#175)

[Asheshp23]

Great to hear! Count me in. Here's my merged PR (#166). Excited to contribute more! 🎉

[twostraws]

Hello, @lechuckcaptain and @Asheshp23! Thank you for offering to help with Control Room. There are a few areas I'm keen to focus on, but right now I'm more interested in thinking about what's possible – what features are we missing, what new things should be added or fixed, and so on. Once we nail down a list of things we can work on, folks can just grab a piece and go for it 🙂

Right now I'm thinking we should look for ways to slim down the UI so it occupies a lot less space on the screen, and also massively powering up the menu bar system so more things can be controlled through there. I'm also thinking we should figure out what it takes to clean up the code so it works entirely through the macOS Sandbox, which would allow it to ship as a free app on the Mac App Store.

Those are just some suggestions from me, but I'd love to hear what you think too – all suggestions are welcome!

[Mcrich23]

@twostraws I wonder if sandboxing would be difficult considering the requirement to access xcrun.

[nickkaczmarek]

@Mcrich23 I would think we could create some sort of privileged helper process that handles the actual calls to xcrun and then communicates via XPC back to the main app. An app I use, SwitchGlass uses a similar technique to allow being on the Mac App Store and providing app quitting behavior. https://hypercritical.co/switchglass/#quit

[twostraws]

@nickkaczmarek It might simply be the case that if the user manually selects their Xcode version using a File Open dialog, we are allowed to use xcrun directly?

[nickkaczmarek]

@nickkaczmarek It might simply be the case that if the user manually selects their Xcode version using a File Open dialog, we are allowed to use xcrun directly?

@twostraws that's a great point. I always forget about that escape hatch with sandbox folder permissions. I believe you're right that the user enables access to an entire folder so long as they choose it from a File Open Dialog.

Putting this in the mac app store could end up removing the need for something I'm writing up right now RE: automated releases, homebrew, etc. And that is that we first (may) need to automating tagging on successful PR merges so that we can ensure we always have a build with each PR. That may be a bigger discussion though. I can start a new issue once I've finalized my thoughts and some options. I just really want the ability to be able to get the latest build without needing to compile it myself.

[twostraws]

I would be very happy indeed to have Control Room on the App Store as a free download!

[nickkaczmarek]

I would be very happy indeed to have Control Room on the App Store as a free download!

@twostraws pulling on that string some more, do you envision a world in which each merge to main leads to a update tag and push to the app store via CI?

Or would you prefer to handle that ad-hoc?

I'm trying to figure out if I should invest in coming up with some sort of CI process that enables this.

[twostraws]

Pushing to the App Store automatically doesn't seem particularly safe, so I'm not sure this is a route I'd be happy to go down. Just getting a build onto the App Store would help a great many people, at which point we could look to refine the UI, etc.

[nickkaczmarek]

@twostraws Are you open to automating releases to github while we move towards Sandboxing the app for Mac App Store distribution? The idea being that one would be able to download a DMG from a Releases tab instead of cloning and building themselves.

[twostraws]

@nickkaczmarek Yes, that sounds more reasonable – if there's a problem, folks can always get the source and build it themselves.