DotPurple v1.5 - File rename monitoring and macOS .app notarization!
Sunday, February 14, 2021 at 12:02 PM
A new update is out for DotPurple with some exciting changes!
Monitoring for File Name Changes
DotPurple never really played nicely with files that were renamed or projects that were renamed. There were ways to "re-find" a project, but it was a little annoying to use -- you had to manually find files with a file picker.
Now, if DotPurple is open to the projects page when those project or solution renames occur, the project list will auto-update to reflect the changed name! Unfortunately, if the file rename happens when DotPurple isn't open on the projects page, it won't pick up on the file rename. 😅
Note, however, that renaming a project will update DotPurple, but not the insides of any solution files!
Read some of the discussion about this issue on GitHub here: https://github.com/DotPurpleApp/DotPurple-App/issues/4
macOS Notarization
On macOS, apps are basically required to go through a process called notarization. This puts your app through Apple's servers to verify that it doesn't have malware, then your users don't see scary warnings that the software might be malicious. The process to notarize your software is...difficult to figure out and rather annoying. See Apple's docs here.
Now, DotPurple Pro users can notarize their .NET applications all within the application. In fact, DotPurple now builds and notarizes its own software starting with v1.5.2! Yes, DotPurple is used to build, publish, and notarize itself. And after you tweak the settings, that all happens in one click! This works great with Avalonia apps in our experience.
For more info on all the pre-requisite steps you need to take before you can notarize (any macOS software, really), as well as see some more info on DotPurple notarization steps you'll have to take, see this link on DotPurple's website about notarization. This is a paid feature -- please consider supporting our software.
Other Changes
- DotPurple now does a better job of monitoring for projects or solutions that are deleted or moved. (DotPurple scans projects every 60 seconds to see if anything is missing, too.)
- You can now use the menu (Edit -> Close Current Project Tab) or Control + W on your keyboard to close the currently open project tab. This only works if the project tab isn't busy at the moment! (e.g. you can't close a project tab that is currently building your project...)
- You can now resize the project tree pane to view your super-long project file names!
- Added .zip output for macOS .app output (for easier moving to a macOS computer)
- Use JetBrains Mono for the console font (v1.5.3)
- Fixed some issues with UTF-8 characters in the console on Windows
- Misc other fixes and changes
Special Thanks
We want to thank @dantesupertramp for contributing funds (outside of our license features) towards the development of the macOS code signing and notarization features in DotPurple. Thank you very much!!! 🎉