rdmsm4x-changelog-20260826-1620-rtty-build44-flows-fleet

Session 2026-08-26 ~15:05–16:20 EDT · rdmsm4x

RTTy 0.3.822 build 44 deployed to 5 of 6 fleet Macs, carrying working per-application flow visibility with per-endpoint attribution, plus the Mac App Store content-filter foundation and a repaired Standard target.

The defect this release exists to fix

Build 42's application-flows band was dead on every fleet host. The shipping runner passed -J bytes_in,bytes_out, which makes nettop emit a four-field row with counters at indices 2/3, but NettopCSVParser required six fields and read 4/5. Every live sample failed to parse, so the band read "Collecting application flows…" forever — while every unit test stayed green, because the fixtures were captured from the wide -x layout the runner never used.

Fixed by making the parser layout-aware, and closed for good by the test that could actually have caught it: an opt-in live integration test (RTTY_LIVE_NETWORK_TESTS=1) that runs the real shipping runner against real nettop and asserts the output parses. Unit fixtures cannot catch a flag change that alters column layout; only exercising the two together can.

New functionality

• Per-endpoint attribution. Each process row expands to the remote endpoints it is talking to — protocol, remote address:port, rates, totals. Dropping -P makes nettop nest connection rows under their owning process, so both views come from the SAME sample: no extra invocation, no added CPU, no entitlement.
• Two parser defects found and fixed, both the same shape: a connection descriptor can satisfy the process-identity rule (IPv6 ports are dot-separated; so are IPv4 addresses in unsupported-protocol rows). Reading either as a process does not merely drop that row — it REPLACES the owning process, so every row beneath it is attributed to a phantom app. Any row containing <-> is now disqualified from being read as a process.

Fleet state

Verified per host by running the exact shipping nettop invocation and parsing it the way the app does. Every host — both macOS 27.0 and the Intel 26.7 machine — emits the same narrow layout, so the fix holds fleet-wide across two OS versions.

Rollback: each host keeps /Applications/RTTy.app.backup-build42-20260826T2014*. Restore = quit RTTy, sudo mv the backup back, relaunch.

App Store (Standard) channel — foundation only, not shipped

• Packaging correction. BUILD-43-PLAN W3 and the flow-visibility research both specified a system extension with content-filter-provider-systemextension. That is the Developer ID form; the App Store uses the unsuffixed content-filter-provider packaged as an .appex. Built as specified it would have failed submission with "Unsatisfied entitlements". Corrected in both documents. Appex packaging also avoids the macOS 26.3 sysextd activation bug the research called its biggest operational risk.
• Standard had not compiled since 2026-08-24 (ISSUES RTTY-B44-001). Five files were reachable from Standard sources but missing from project.yml. qa_release.sh builds Direct only, so every gate was green while the App Store product could not build. Repaired; boundary now asserted in standard_project_test.sh, and strings finds zero nettop in the Standard binary or the appex.
• Identity: Standard → com.eastcoastscience.RTTy. Direct deliberately keeps net.dataroo.RTTy, so the fleet needed no TCC or Keychain re-grant.

Evidence

• Tests 750 passed / 0 failed / 5 skipped (opt-in live), up from 723. Both live nettop tests run explicitly and pass.
• Direct: universal (x86_64 + arm64), team ZU2882L4HT, gitDirty: false, commit 5739b77.
• Standard: BUILD SUCCEEDED with the appex embedded at Contents/PlugIns/RTTyNetworkFilter.appex.
• Archive sha256 268626516200fa5f…, executable sha256 e36368e2ac58bec5….

Outstanding

• rdmpw3265m needs build 44 when it comes back up.
• Blocked on Rich: App IDs com.eastcoastscience.RTTy and .NetworkFilter with the Network Extensions capability, App Group group.com.eastcoastscience.RTTy, and profiles for both. Nothing filter-related can be signed or run until these exist.
• Standard host UI (flows band fed by the filter, per-app block toggle) and NEFilterManager activation are not written.
• Accessibility TCC grant on rdmsm4x still gates qa gates 5–7.