Hey!
I'm trying to create an XPC messaging feature between my daemon and main application.
I'm trying to use the new Swift low-level API available from macOS 14.0. The documentation is extremely confusing when looking at it from Swift:
The xpc_listener_t type
Seems to be something I shouldn't use in the Swift API, and would rather have to use XPCListener.
Also, it appears to have no public API other than the xpc_listener_set_peer_code_signing_requirement function. Which would make it impossible to create this type.
However, when going into xpc.h, one can see that there is an API in fact:
API_AVAILABLE(macos(14.0), macCatalyst(17.0))
API_UNAVAILABLE(ios, tvos, watchos)
XPC_EXPORT XPC_SWIFT_NOEXPORT XPC_RETURNS_RETAINED XPC_WARN_RESULT
xpc_listener_t _Nullable
xpc_listener_create(const char * service,
dispatch_queue_t _Nullable target_queue,
xpc_listener_create_flags_t flags,
xpc_listener_incoming_session_handler_t incoming_session_handler,
xpc_rich_error_t _Nullable * _Nullable error_out);
which is a very unusual declaration - the first parameter for example shows up as Int8 type in Swift. Not to mention I haven't been able to create the next parameter, xpc_listener_create_flags_t at all, even though it seems to be a UInt64-based flag based on the C declaration, but passing UInt64(0) throws a compiler error. It really seems like something I shouldn't use from Swift.
But then again, the extremely important security-related API mentioned above, xpc_listener_set_peer_code_signing_requirement can only take an xpc_listener_t object as a parameter, not an XPCListener type.
There seems to be no conversion available between the two. However the documentation in the XPC framework seems to be telling the story of these two types being very equal, because of the following:
The xpc_session_t type
seemingly again has only deprecated methods mostly, the important one staying behind is xpc_session_set_peer_code_signing_requirement.
However, this would again require the creation of an xpc_session_t object, for which in the XPC framework one will find declarations like:
@available(macOS, introduced: 13.0, deprecated: 14.0, renamed: "XPCSession")
@available(macCatalyst, introduced: 16.0, deprecated: 17.0, renamed: "XPCSession")
@available(iOS, unavailable)
@available(tvOS, unavailable)
@available(watchOS, unavailable)
public typealias xpc_session_t = OS_xpc_object
plus basically all API of XPCSession being originally declared as xpc_session_* APIs and all of them having deprecated: 14.0, renamed: * marks. This is telling me xpc_session_t and XPCSession are in fact the same/same-ish.
But again, there is seemingly no conversion between these two types. Which brings me to again being unable to create a code signing requirement for the XPCSession object.
I've read some older forum posts, and I saw Apple Engineers admitting the code signing requirement APIs are missing from the new Swift APIs, however they seem to have been added in macOS 14.4 - although it appears to have been mistakenly added to the C-family functions, which have not been exposed to Swift correctly, because they still use the deprecated xpc_listener_t and xpc_session_t types.
So my question is: what is going on here? :) Making XPC connections without a code signing requirement in 2025 seems like a no-go, so do I have to still stick with C - even though this new API seems to be focused on Swift?
