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Mobile export and signing

· 2 min read
Dragos
Balaur

balaur export fused a pack onto a runtime for Linux, macOS or Windows. Now the same command writes an iOS .app, an Android APK layout, and a signed macOS bundle.

What landed​

  • Mobile targets. --target ios writes a .app with game.bpak beside the executable; --target android an APK layout with it under assets/. The engine reads the pack from the bundle instead of from its own file.
  • A signed Mac. A flat fused binary cannot be validly signed — appending bytes is exactly what a signature cannot cover — so --app builds a .app with the pack as a sealed resource and signs it, ad hoc or with --sign "Developer ID Application: …".
  • Templates on demand. Exporting for a platform you are not on offers to download that platform's runtime from the engine's own release tag, checked against SHA256SUMS, into a per-user cache. --no-download for CI.
  • balaur update. Replaces the whole install — binary, bundled editor, runtime template — with the latest published build, verified against the release's checksums. --check only reports.
balaur export my-game --target ios                     # -> my-game.app
balaur export my-game --target android                 # -> my-game-android/
balaur export my-game --target macos-universal --app   # -> a signed .app

A pack is bytecode, scenes and assets in sorted key order, so the same sources give the same bytes on any machine, and a packed run is pure interpretation, which is what lets it land on platforms that forbid JIT. Shipping a game has every flag.