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Enhancing macOS Privacy and Security with Application UUID

With the Sequoia update, macOS now relies on the UUID of applications for various privacy and security controls, such as network access. This new feature of macOS could cause issues on the end-user side, such as having to often re-authorize the built 4D applications. To address this, starting from 4D 20 R9, each 4D application built for macOS now has its own application UUID. This change ensures better-tuned access controls. Let’s delve into the details.

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Nicolas Brachfogel
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Building evaluation applications

In previous versions of 4D, developers could request evaluation licenses for development purposes, but providing end users with evaluation versions of built applications—whether standalone or client/server—was challenging or even impossible.

Starting with 4D 20.7 and 20 R8, you can now create evaluation versions of your applications. When a user runs an evaluation application for the first time on a new machine, it will automatically contact a 4D service to obtain a 14-day evaluation license—without any manual action required from the user.

This blog post will guide you through the process of creating an evaluation version of your application for demo purposes.

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Vanessa Talbot
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How to Implement Continuous Integration with 4D: A Step-by-Step Guide

In the world of software development, a new concept has appeared in recent years called “Continuous Integration.” The definition we see or hear everywhere is :

“CI is a process that automates the compilation, testing, and delivery of an application on a regular and frequent basis.”

Having understood this definition, which expresses an interesting and promising process, what do I need to do to implement it in 4D? If you search the Internet, you’ll find that there are many CI tools and frameworks available.

However, there are several prerequisites before using these CI tools.

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Vanessa Talbot
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Create a standalone application with the Build4D component

A new build4D component has been available on GitHub for a few months. It empowers you to effortlessly create a compiled project or a component. Things are getting even better; this new component version will enable you to generate a single-user application, expanding the possibilities for your development workflow.

So with tool4D available since v20, integrating the application generation process into your CI (Continuous Integration) tools has become remarkably convenient.

Let’s delve into the details!

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Vanessa Talbot
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Build an Application with 4D Commands

Since several versions of 4D, different features have been added to create your own build chain. For example,

  • the creation of a “.zip” folder,
  • the addition of information such as the copyright on an executable or a “dll”,
  • the creation of an “info.plist” file,
  • and the new build4D component.

 

With 4D v20, two new features allow finalizing the creation of a standalone or client/server application in 4D code:

  • the addition of an icon to an executable
  • the generation of the deployment license file for a server (OEM license only) or a standalone application.

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Vanessa Talbot
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Build your Compiled Structure or Component with Build4D

With the introduction of the project mode, it’s pretty easy to manipulate the components of your projects.

In the last few feature releases, we have added several functionalities that allow you to create your own build chain adapted to your team, your working methods, and your needs.

For example:

 

To help you create your own build chain or integrate 4D into a continuous integration tool, we have developed a component named Build4D, available on GitHub with the sources.

For this first step, Build4D allows you to create a compiled structure and a component. We will continue to enrich it to enable you to manage a single-user application, client application, or server application.

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Nicolas Brachfogel
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Reduce your 4D apps’ size with these new features

In our ongoing effort to improve the building of 4D applications, we’ve added a few functionalities to 4D v19R5 that you’ll certainly find useful.

The first one is the ability to remove some of the biggest 4D modules from your applications: CEF, Mecab, PHP, Spell Checker, and 4D Updater. If you don’t need some of these modules, you’ll be able to significantly reduce the size of your applications.

We also changed the final directory when you build a compiled structure, in order to accommodate those using multiple compiled versions of the same structure.

As for our Japanese customers, we have merged the Japanese version of 4D and the international one on MacOS.

Let’s delve into the details.

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Nicolas Brachfogel
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Simplified cross-platform client/server application building on Windows

The release of Silicon Macs had a great impact on the way 4D compiles applications. Before v19, 4D was compiling only for Intel architecture, using the same code on Mac and Windows. But Silicon Macs use a new architecture, and as such 4D needs to compile specifically for Silicon. It affects cross-platform client/server application building.

As long as you build your server on Mac, it’s not much of an issue, as you can compile for both Intel and Silicon platforms. But on Windows, it’s not possible to compile for Silicon Macs. Our current recommendation is to compile the project on Mac for both architectures, and then copy it on a Windows machine before building the server. Unfortunately, for big projects with a lot of data, the copy can take some time.

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