This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the bash category.
Last Updated: 2024-04-25
I installed the chromedriver binary with Homebrew but it would not execute,
showing Apple's warning "cannot be opened because developer could not be
identified".
The fix was this line of code:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine chromedriver
The more interesting and generalizable question is what this does. The overall keyword is that is uses the Extended File Attributes system, while enables users to associate computer files with metadata.
Typical uses: - storing the author of a document - the character encoding of a plain-text document - a checksum - discretionary access control information.
In linux, any regular file or directory may have extended attributes consisting
of a name and associated data. The name consists of a namespace identifier and a
dot character. Currently, four namespaces exist: user, trusted, security and
system This data is not stored in the main data for files, but in the attributes
area of the volume metadata (i.e. they are stored centrally). As such they are
out of reach of normal file tools, and can only be accessed using tools
specifically intended to work with xattrs.
Since macOS 10.5, files originating from the web are marked with com.apple.quarantine
Be careful when writing from one file system to another: sometimes the xattrs will be stripped (e.g. writing from HFS+ to NFS)