Creating a Self-signed Code Certificate for XCode

I wanted to make my own build of Textual the other day and needed a code signing certificate to complete the build. I decided to make single, long-lived certificate to that I could reuse for building multiple applications.

  1. Open the "Keychain Access" application

    bash open -a "Keychain Access"

  2. Application menu > Certificate Assistant > Create a Certificate...

    Create a Certificate

  3. Configure your new certificate

    • Name: Self-signed Applications
    • Identity Type: Self Signed Root
    • Certificate Type: Code Signing
    • [x] Let me override defaults
    • Continue
    • Change expiration date

    • Validity Period (days): 3650
    • Continue

  4. Just keep hitting Continue to accept defaults from here on out

Note: Xcode seems to cache certificate info on startup. If you had XCode open while you created this certificate, restart it.

I have since used this same certificate to build Growl and a couple of other apps. I'm thinking that I'll export the public certificate and import it on my other OSX hosts so I can share the compiled binaries from machine to machine without needing to recompile them.

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