I had a couple questions when trying to put an app on the app store.
1) With Xcode 5 when trying to validate the archived project, Xcode 5 keeps crashing when trying to download the provisioning profile from the net. I have refreshed the provisioning profiles using the Preferences >> Accounts >> View Details and have clicked the refresh button but it still crashes when I try to validate.
2) Is it best practice to have a separate distribution certificates and provisioning profiles for each app you put on the app store? right now I have a separate provision profile for my apps but they are under one certificate. Can you guys tell me what the best practice is?
3) And can you try to explain what the certificates and the provision profiles are doing? Also, what would the difference between distribution provision profiles and development provisioning profiles.
1) - Check what version of Xcode you're running. I had a similar issue where I was running a developer preview - you can't submit an app from a DP version of Xcode, and mine was crashing at the exact same point as yours.
2) - Having 2 certificates - 1 for dev, 1 for distribution seems to be the norm. I would suggest that you use explicit app ids and not the wildcard ID when you go to create your App ID though.
3) The way I see it, Provisioning profiles are your wrappers for your different things that make it up - mainly the signing certificate, the app id and the device id(s) - You select either a distribution or a dev signing certificate to determine if the app is being developed or submitted to the app store. You select the App ID to tell the app what functions it will have (iCloud, Data protection, etc) and what teams can work on the app. The Devices are what UDIDs are authorised to run this app that has this associated provisioning profile. The provisioning profile is how it's all packaged up.
As another way to look at it, You have your .ipa file (your app) and your provisioning profile. The device looks at the profile, checks if the devices UDID is present in the provisioning profile, checks the App ID to see what features it's allowed to run, and the certificate is used to sign it all off.
Hope this helps.
Related
I am using Parse.com to send client push notifications, from one iDevice to another.
It works well with the 'development' setup, i.e. with
- the Push Notification Setting of the appID set on 'Development'
- a development SSL certificate
- a development provisioning profile
With this setup, I managed to send a push notification to myself (sender = receiver = my device).
Now I want to test the communication between 2 different devices. To do so, I use TestFlight (because this is the way I usually send updates to my client).
I followed all the recommended steps to move from Development to Ad Hoc :
updated AppID settings to 'Production' Push Notifications
created a production SSL certificate, uploaded it to Parse Server
generated a new Provisioning Profile set for Ad Hoc Development, and installed it on the iPhone (checked on Organizer Library). This Ad Hoc Provisioning Profile is named : 'PushMyMoving_Push_Production_Profile'
updated the Project/Target build settings under 'Code Signing' to tell Xcode that it should use PushMyMoving_Push_Production_Profile (and the corresponding iPhone Distribution Certificate) for now on.
The issue : the build is successfully submitted, but as soon as it is, Apple sends me this e-mail :
And, naturally, I can no longer receive/send push notifications. Here's what I tried so far :
I opened the PushMyMoving_Push_Production_Profile to see if the Push Notification Entitlement was missing. It isn't. So my guess is that Xcode doesn't submit/archive the build with the right Provisioning Profile, although I'm telling it to do so in the Build Settings!
Actually, I noticed that whenever I submit the build, Xcode automatically selects a wildcard provisioning profile :
I tried to delete all the wildcard provisioning profile from Member Center & my Mac, but (annoyingly!) Xcode automatically re-creates them whenever I refresh the Provisioning Profiles Panel under Xcode>Preferences>Accounts. Is there a way to completely erase wildcard profiles ?
This thread : XCode 6 and Ad-Hoc distribution without XC: provisioning suggests that it can be that the "ad-hoc profile doesn't contain all of the devices on your team" but I carefully checked ALL the devices I have when I generated the Ad Hoc profile.
I've also tried to edit & re-generate, re-install the provisioning profile (a common advice apparently) but Xcode still does it its way.
Any help would be much appreciated! I have been struggling for days, it is really frustrating when the problem does not come from the code !
Thanks
Thanks Rhythmic Fistman for the help. I found the answer today : I was submitting my build to TestFlight with an Ad-Hoc provisioning profile, instead of an AppStore Distribution Provisioning Profile. I had read somewhere that Xcode was creating a Ad-Hoc provisioning profile behind the scenes while submitting to TestFlight, so I thought that the Ad-Hoc profile was appropriate. But since TestFlight runs like the AppStore, not having registered the subscribed devices UDID in advance (as with Ad-Hoc distribution) it makes sense to use a "broader" profile such as an AppStore Distribution Provisioning Profile.
So for anyone using Push Notifications with Testflight, you do need an AppStore Distribution Provisioning Profile. Then Xcode will automatically picks it for the submission phase.
Expunging wildcard provisioning profiles from Xcode and the developer portal can be done, but you can probably fix your problems by explicitly setting your Release Provisioning Profile to the correct Ad Hoc profile in your build settings:
This should stop Xcode getting too creative when Archiving.
I've got a Distribution Provisioning Profile I use for distributing my application to QA testers via AdHoc builds / HockeyApp. I'm also part of a team of other developers working on other apps, and they have their own QA teams.
Whenever someone else adds a device to the Apple Developer Member Center (previously the "Provisioning Portal") located at https://developer.apple.com/membercenter/index.action , the Distribution Provisioning Profile becomes Invalid.
To make the profile valid again, I must open up the profile and include all of the newly added devices in the profile, then re-download it.
This is all fine, but it seems unnecessary. My Distribution Provisioning Profile should only need the devices of my app's testers linked to it, not the devices others have added for their own testing purposes.
Does anyone have any information / links to documentation on why this happens (searches only seem to bring up the common issues with provisioning profiles in general that people always run into when starting out), and whether or not there is a way to get around it?
Thanks,
- Adam
I am having issues trying to achieve or even build a release build of an app I am working on. Whenever I try to build the app for release I get an error saying:
No provisioning profiles with a valid signing identity (i.e. certificate and private key pair) were found.
I have the cert for this profile on my computer but in the Developer Portal I only have a certificate for development. Is this causing this error to occur? Do I need to have a Distribution cert to be able to build for release? Any help would be appreciated.
Note: I am a developer(team member) for a company so I do not have direct access to the Apple Developer Portal.
I know provisioning profiles are a pain :) This is what I do to stay organize and develop/distribute my projects:
The developer portal (not xcode) contains the most accurate source of profiles. For example, imagine you created a merchant certificate, turned on apple pay, and then generated a provisioning profile. Then let's say you decide you no longer want to use apple pay - the act of turning it off actually invalidates the provisioning profile. You will see a yellow "invalid" warning in the developer portal, but the provisioning profile may still be available in xcode! Really annoying. So I would always make sure that your provisioning profile is valid in the developer profile before distributing an app.
In the developer portal, always make sure you have two distribution profiles -- one ad hoc to use with testflight, and one to distribute to the apple store. You should also have one developer profile to build and debug your code.
Once you have your profiles set up, go into xcode and refresh the provisioning profiles as described here: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/MaintainingProfiles/MaintainingProfiles.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012582-CH30-SW26. I.e. go to preferences, accounts, view details..., and click the refresh button on the bottom left hand corner.
Now that xcode's provisioning profiles are updated, you need to now code sign with the right profiles. To do so, go into your project settings, and go into build settings for both the project and the target. Under debug, select your iOS development certificate. Under release, select your iOS distribution certificate. Under provisioning profile, you will want to select your development profile just to build on your device and debug, your ad hoc distribution profile if you want to archive the project and send it via testflight, or your apple store distribution profile if you want to archive the project and submit it to the apple store.
A few things to note, is that when you are creating the provisioning profiles, you need to specify the certificate you are dealing with. So if you are creating one of the two distribution profiles, you will need to select your iOS distribution certificate. And when you select ad hoc distribution, will need to select the devices that you want to be able to distribute too. Testflight will help you register the devices that you want to distribute to, and once registered, you will be able to select those devices to add them to the provisioning profile. If the certificate you select in xcode was not used to generate the provisioning profile you selected in xcode, then you will probably get the error you mentioned. Think of the provisioning profile as the link from you as a developer (i.e. your certificate) and/or your devices to your app id (i.e. your project).
This might have been asked lots of times, but still I couldn't find info on why are they needed. I use DEVELOPER prov profiles to test apps on my device, that makes sense.
The Provisioning Portal explains prov profiles like this:
A Provisioning Profile is a collection of digital assets that uniquely ties
developers and devices to an authorized iOS Development Team and enables
a device to be used for testing.
By this logic they are only needed for testing, eg not for distribution. Do we need one to deploy the app on the AppStore?
Absolutely yes. The distribution profile is used for submission to the App Store. It does not have the 100 device limit that the development profiles have.
From the Tools Workflow Guide:
When you’re ready to share your app for user testing or for general distribution through the
App Store, you need to create an archive of the app using a distribution provisioning
profile and send it to app testers or submit it to iTunes Connect. This chapter shows
how to perform these tasks.
The distribution profile prevents the attackers from submitting a modified version of your app to the store - only you, who hold the private key of the distribution certificate, can submit and update your app.
Once your app is submitted, your embedded.mobileprovision and your binary will be checked and compared to make sure that you are the legitimate author. embedded.mobileprovision file is then discard and the app is signed again by Apple using their own certificate (which is by default accepted by all iDevices), so that all iDevices can run it.
When an iDevice downloads the app, the executable binary is then encrypted with an encryption key associated that device. At run time, only that device can decrypt the executable binary and run it.
There are two types of distibution profiles, the first one is to submit your app to the appstore and the other one (Ad-Hoc) is necessary if you can´t connect a device to your mac(developer profile). Then you can share your app wit the Ad-Hoc profile to someone else e.g. via mail.
Distribution Provisioning Profile
Distribution Provisioning Profile is used by Apple to publish an application to App Store. When Apple approve the application it is signed by Apple and became public.
Distribution Provisioning Profile contains:
Application ID - application which are going to run
Distribution certificate - who can debug the app
[Development Provisioning Profile]
[Certificate]
I never know which profiles I am supposed to be signing a build and signing a release for ad-hoc distribution with.
I've tried signing the build with the ad-hoc distribution profile and then the package with the push profile but that didn't work, so just tried many combinations until I hit one that worked.
Yesterday after months of hassle-free operation regarding signing I had to re-install XCode after it kept crashing and then I could no longer sign for development on my own phone nor for ad-hoc distribution onto other's phones.
I tried dozens of combinations of different profiles until eventually I got an ad-hoc release that I could install on somebody else's phone, but then XCode crashed again and I've lost what that combination was, making me want to cry, and I don't want to go through that process of trying all possible combinations again.
Within XCode in the Code Signing Identity section I have the following choices:
a) Apple Push Profile
b) iOS Team Provisioning Profile
c) NNN Development Profile, where NNN is the name of the project/product being developed
d) iPhone Distribution Company Name which is described as an identity without provisioning profiles.
e) ad hoc distribtion
Which of these 5 above should I be using to sign a build to run on my own device using XCode? Do I need to change it to ad-hoc distribtion when building to send a package to others to install via itunes?
Secondly, once I've built an archive and want to create an ad-hoc deployment to send it to testers for them to install via iTunes, there is the additional step of signing the built package, for this I am offered the following choices:
1) Apple Push Profile
2) NNN Development Profile
3) iOS Team provisioning Profile
Which of these 3 should be used to sign the ad-hoc deployment.
Thank you very much.
I have 4 provisioning profiles for my apps.
One is the iOS Team provisioning profile supplied by Xcode
The other 3 I've generated via the Apple iOS Provisioning Portal.
1 development profile that is general for my company:BlahBlah.com.myCompany.*
1 adhoc distribution profile that is also general for my company:differentBlaBlah.com.myCompany.*
1 Distirubution profile that is product-specific: BlahBlah.com.myCompany.NNN
When I test on my machine, I use the Xcode-generated one. When I run it on my devices, I use the dev. profile. When I build for distribution to testers, I use the adhoc. When I upload to iTunes, the 3rd.
No entitlements anywhere.
HTH!
Janene