It has been back and forth with the Mac App Store to get Owl published. In short, some of the libraries that Owl uses are not currently compliant with the Mac App Store, so the app cannot currently be published.
Details
For this new version of Owl, we upgraded from using Qt 5.4 to the latest released, Qt 5.8. In this upgrade, Qt replaced one of the modules we were using with another “better” version. For those interested, this change was from using QtWebKit to using QtWebEngine. Unfortunately, QtWebEngine uses private APIs that are blocked with code signed apps that do not allow them function properly in sandbox mode.
What now?
We will be uploading download’able versions of Owl 0.7.6 soon. This way users will still be able to use the new features and give us feedback on the product. As for Mac App Store, we will continue to work with Qt in order to get their modules compliant.
Another option may be to rewrite the portion of Owl that uses QtWebEngine to use something else that would be compliant with the Mac App Store. This option is being explored but as of now no decision has been made.
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