A few months ago, I discussed how new sandboxing requirements have prompted us to move away from the Mac App Store for future releases. Since that blog post, a few things happened:
- The deadline was delayed to 1st June, giving everyone some extra time
- Apple made some changes to OS X to allow more behaviours to be supported within the sandbox
- Apple decided that they would still allow bugfix updates to non-sandboxed apps that were already available in the Mac App Store prior to 1st June
All these moves were welcome, and we thank Apple for making them. We have subsequently been able to publish SourceTree 1.4 to the App Store. We even had an expedited bug fix approved after the 1st June deadline, which was very useful.
Going forward with future releases, however, the changes that have been made to the sandbox still do not quite address all of the issues we have with it. While we could work around them, it would downgrade the user experience, which has always been a red line for us. We also have to consider the fact that the main alternatives to SourceTree are not distributed on the Mac App Store and are therefore not constrained by these rules.
Therefore our position has not materially changed since the original decision: SourceTree 1.5 onwards will only be distributed via sourcetreeapp.com. We advise all users on the Mac App Store to migrate to the direct download version, either now or when 1.5 is released, so you can benefit from the awesome new stuff we have in store for you.
[This update is just to clarify the questions we've had from people who have seen the recent 1.4 updates on the Mac App Store. We have already started using the new Developer ID code signatures since 1.4.4, which means the direct download version is compatible with Gatekeeper on Mountain Lion -- Apple's recommended method to distribute apps outside the Mac App Store.]