jpackage and alternate JRE's - OS X

[Michael Hall]

I was looking at GraalVM in order to try out FastR, a jre based R language implementation.

It seemed to me if it was actually a standalone JRE I should be able to use jpackage to turn it into an application. Or use my usual application for trying things out but just replace the runtime.

It seems to work for running the application. I seem to be able to use the included RScript command to run R files. I can’t use the R command due to limitations in my own code. Otherwise the normal application functionality appears to work.

However, If I try a simple test for programmatic R access the application crashes with…

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (Code Signature Invalid)

If I check…

codesign -dv outFastR/FastRGraalHP.app
Executable=/Users/mjh/HalfPipe/HalfPipe_jpkg/outFastR/FastRGraalHP.app/Contents/MacOS/FastRGraalHP
Identifier=jpackageapplauncher
…

It does appear that jpackage is doing some default code signing.

I guess my question would be if it could be possible to omit the signing. Where I assume the application would be subject to the usual  Gatekeeper ‘use at your own risk’ messages. But could be runnable.

I see there are signing parameters in the help but I currently don’t have ADC certificates. That includes —mac-sign to indicate signing should be done. Could  there be some way to get none?

Or supported is that you must get the signing certs? 

It doesn’t make sense to me that you can fully use the included commands but can’t have programmatic access. How is that less secure? But it seems to be the case. 

I realize jpackage is probably not intended to support GraalVM.  But it is possible it’s use could be extended even if unsupported.