Devs: RIM Provides GUI Build, Sign, & Deploy App for Adobe AIR PlayBook Apps

Some devs might not be comfortable with the command line tools available for current BlackBerry development on the PlayBook. The command line tools are great for scripting (which is what I do) but RIM has decided to release a BlackBerry Tablet OS Graphical Aid app to help developers out who like GUI (Graphic User Interfaces). This new Graphical Aid ties into the Adobe Flash Builder to help you easily build Adobe Air apps for the PlayBook. It allows you to build, sign, and deploy apps without touching the command line. Personally I wish they would just do away with the complicated code signing process but this is a nice step.

Currently the Graphic Aid only works on Windows for Adobe Air PlayBook apps but RIM is promising to release Mac OSX and Linux support soon. No word on if they will release a WebWorks version. You can pick up the BlackBerry Tablet OS Graphical Aid app at this link.

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RIM Apologizes for Code Signing Server Outage

It took RIM 5 days but they finally got on top of the Code Signing server outages at the end of last week. Tyler Lessard, head of RIM’s developer relations team, also publically apologized for the outages and confirmed that RIM take issues like this seriously. Hopefully in the future they will take them seriously enough to offer developers an ongoing status of the situation instead of them having to scour the forums.

Alternatively I was really hoping to hear RIM finally just admit that code signing in its current form is simply a pain for developers and adds little to no value. I have been trying to drive that message home to RIM but they seem to just love themselves some code signing even with their next gen PlayBook OS.

Here is the full letter from RIM:

Hello BlackBerry developer community, it’s Tyler Lessard here. I head up the Developer Relations team here at Research In Motion® (RIM®). As some of you are aware, we recently had some issues with the stability of our code signing servers. Earlier this week, BlackBerry® developers were not able to sign their applications during periods of downtime of the code signing service. The issues that we experienced have now been resolved and I’d like to apologize to the community for this situation. We realize this can be a disruption to your business and we take issues like this very seriously.

As soon as the issue was identified, it was escalated for root cause analysis and resolution. Through that investigation, we identified a diagnostic activity that was acting abnormally during the signing process. Upon resolving the issue with this diagnostic process, operations were restored to a level of service that we would expect.

The signing servers are now operating normally and developers can continue with code signing. We are continuing to monitor the service closely and are actively evaluating new solutions that we can implement to improve the reliability of the service overall. As always, thank you for your support and for bearing with us through this exercise.

- Tyler Lessard, VP Developer Relations and Alliances

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Ongoing BlackBerry Code Signing Servers Issues & Outage

 

In a really painful move for most third party developers RIM’s code signing servers have been down and having issues since the weekend started. RIM is the only company I know of that requires developers to “phone home” to RIM’s infrastructure to code sign applications and the whole process is already cumbersome. I have been begging my contacts at RIM for years to get rid of the undo burden this complex code signing process adds to BlackBerry developers but it has fallen on deaf ears and instead they have been trying to improve it ever so slowly.

Josep pointed out to me that the code signing servers were down earlier in the week but that is not unusual. What is unusual is how long they have been down for and are still currently in a “degraded state 3-10 emails every single time they code sign an application but they have failed to notify devs about when this outage will be fixed or even its status. This is stopping devs from releasing or testing their third party apps until the code signing servers are back up.

Josep also pointed out this website that tracks the success and downtime of all 4 of the signing servers:
isthesigningserverdown.com/beta/

We shouldn’t need such a website. Hopefully somebody at RIM is noticing and realizes that code signing should only be required for the more complex Certicom cryptographic APIs. They offer mickey mouse security and RIM can simply allow remote killing of rogue apps using another process like BIS. While this is not a big deal in the long run I simply hate code signing…

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