I’m learning to use Beeware to create mobile apps that access Bluetooth devices that I created. I’m coding on a Mac M1 Airbook running Sonoma with VSCode.

So I gathered that although Beeware does not by itself have Bluetooth LE support, it can use the bundled Rubicon compatability layer to access Objective-C frameworks, especially the corebluetooth framework.

Now, the tutorial code in https://rubicon-objc.readthedocs.io/en/stable/tutorial/tutorial-1.html runs fine. Yes. I’ve installed xcode command line tools, pyobjc etc, so all that should be ok, but when I try to run this very simple code:

from rubicon.objc import ObjCClass, ObjCInstance

# Import the necessary frameworks
CoreBluetooth = ObjCClass("CoreBluetooth")
CBCentralManager = ObjCClass("CBCentralManager")
CBPeripheral = ObjCClass("CBPeripheral")
CBCharacteristic = ObjCClass("CBCharacteristic")

I get the following error:

(venv) joonas@Joonas-MacBook-Air beeware-rubicon-testing % /Users/joonas/Documents/Projects/beeware-rubicon-testin
g/venv/bin/python /Users/joonas/Documents/Projects/beeware-rubicon-testing/rubicon_test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/joonas/Documents/Projects/beeware-rubicon-testing/rubicon_test.py", line 19, in <module>
    CoreBluetooth = ObjCClass("CoreBluetooth")
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/joonas/Documents/Projects/beeware-rubicon-testing/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/rubicon/objc/api.py", line 1372, in __new__
    ptr, name = cls._new_from_name(name_or_ptr)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/joonas/Documents/Projects/beeware-rubicon-testing/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/rubicon/objc/api.py", line 1205, in _new_from_name
    raise NameError(f"ObjC Class {name} couldn't be found.")
NameError: ObjC Class b'CoreBluetooth' couldn't be found.

After running

otool -L /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreBluetooth.framework/CoreBluetooth

it really seems that I don’t have CoreBluetooth installed. Yes, the file is a symlink to Versions/Current/Resources/CoreBluetooth, but that file does not exist!

I’ve tried reinstalling xcode command-line tools to no avail. Is this somehow related to me not using xcode to code (since I prefer VSCode)? Can I somehow install the framework manually? Should I sacrifice a goat to Shub-Niggurath for this to work, or what sacrificial algorithms would you suggest? Thanks!