I am making my .ipa for an app I'm about to upload to TestFlight, but I can't seem to figure out how to make it available to all of my teammates.
When I make a provisioning profile at developer.apple.com, I can only register one device per profile. (Right?)
When I create the .ipa in Build -> Archive, I can only use one Provisioning Profile. (Right??)
So this means I can only make an .ipa work for one device. (Right???)
This can't be right. What am I doing wrong?
An ad-hoc distribution profile can support more than one device. Check you are making one of those, rather than a development profile. It's a different tab in the portal. The device UDIDs can all be added in the portal as well.
Alternatively, if you're on the enterprise program, you don't need to gather UDIDs and can install on devices without them. There is some confusion over whether this is technically against Apple's terms but in practice it is being used by many developers for beta testing.
Related
I have an app (adhoc dist.) and uploaded it to Diawi.
Now, I should add new UDIDs. After add them, do I need to recreate or rebuild the IPA and re-upload to Diawi?
Thanks in advance
An Ad-hoc IPA will only install on the devices listed in the embedded provisioning profile. If you want the app to be able to be installed on additional devices then yes, you need to provide an updated IPA with the updated profile.
Better yet, use TestFlight and avoid all of this hassle.
The answer to your query may be in two types of accounts
1) If you have an Enterprise Apple Account: No need to add tester UUDI to the account as the app can be released using Universal distribution binary which any device can install using OTA installation method.
2) If you have the developer account: your existing app will have no impact but yes for the new devices to install you have to regenerate the profile as the existing as on store account portal will get Invalid and needs to be updated for New IPA compilation. The old one will not work.
I would always recommend having an Enterprise account for a testing/building app company as Appstore Developer account is better for Distribution on Appstore or small scale company who rarely adds device ID for debugging and testing unless its standalone developer like scenario.
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 a bit lost in all the certificates/provisioning profiles.
When I am doing ad-hoc distribution by first doing "archive" and then "distribute" in XCode and chose then my ad-hoc distribution profile, does it matter at all what I have set up in the Project->Target->Build Settings->Code Signing?
On one hand I read in different places that when you archive a build, you can (and really should) use that same archive both for beta testing with ad-hoc and then when ready just sign/distribute the same archive with an appstore profile and upload to app store. That kind of makes sense. It also tells me that I can really leave blank the provisioning profile in the project settings, the one that is chosen during "distribute" action is actually used, and the signing identity is actually the private key associated with the distribution certificate listed in that provisioning profile. Right?
On the other hand, testflight instructions (http://help.testflightapp.com/customer/portal/articles/1333914) clearly state that project settings should be set to use Ad-hoc profile as well, and the same profile must be used in the project settings and in "distribute". That means that I can not use the same archive both for ad-hoc and app-store distribution, can I? Do I need to change project settings every time I want to release for this or that distribution?
Also, if project settings are making any differences in archive/distribute scenario, it is not clear what Code Signing Identity should be used there. Testflight screenshots show iOS Developer is set both for debug and release, yet neither ad-hoc nor app store distribution have the individual iOS developer certificate associated with them, distribution profiles usually are associated with one and one only distribution certificate.
Can someone please shed some light and explain how is it actually supposed to be working?
Thanks
Yes, your build settings matter. Xcode picks up various entitlements from your initial code signing/provisioning profile configuration and it only makes minimal changes to them in the Distribute... phase.
So if Xcode chooses the incorrect profile during the Archive step you can end up with incorrect bundle seed ID, keychain groups, APN environment and iCloud entitlements.
The Distribute... button calls the PackageApplication script, which makes sure that get-task-allow is false (debuggers can't connect), embeds a provisioning profile, then re-signs and zips your app (although I may have the order wrong).
PackageApplication is worth reading. One could fault it for not being very smart, but I think it should be stricter and refuse to package an app whose entitlements differ from the provisioning profile it is using.
You can find it here Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/PackageApplication
I think one stable workflow for distributing Ad Hoc builds is
remove all wildcard provisioning profiles from your system
select your App Store profile in Release Configuration (used in Archive phase)
in Distribute select your Ad Hoc profile
The reason for 1. is that wildcard profiles (profiles that match multiple BundleIDs, created either manually by you or automatically by Xcode) are not worth the trouble. Yes, they get you running code on a device quicker, but you soon have to abandon them if you want to use push notifications or any other interesting service and then they hang around on your system and sooner or later Xcode will silently pick one of them and sabotage your App Store submission.
As for point 2. (selecting the App Store provisioning profile), I'm a little hesitant of specifying profile in the project, but the App Store one only needs to change once a year when your certificate expires (unless you edit the App Identifier in the Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles portal, then you'll need to regenerate your profile & re-select it in your project settings).
Since the Ad Hoc and App Store profiles are based on the same App Identifier, their entitlements will always be in sync.
Point 2. should make point 1. unnecessary, but wildcard profiles will also happily screw up your dev builds too, so why give them the chance to stab you in the back?
Point 3. - you can change your Ad Hoc profile as much as you like - just remember to select the right one in Distribute; the entitlements are taken from the App Store profile which should change rarely. There's nothing stopping you distributing to the App Store from here. That's perfectly natural.
p.s. I don't know why TestFlight recommend selecting Ad Hoc in release instead of App Store.
I've been under the impression for some time that for iOS, signing a build with a developer provisioning profile allows the app to run (and get debugged) on an authorized device (listed in the development provisioning profile) through an XCode build, whereas signing with a distribution profile allows the app to be run (but not debugged) on other iOS devices that have been specifically added to the distribution provisioning file for the purposes of QA/beta testing/etc (and installed via iTunes sync or OTA distribution), without the need for those QA/beta-testers to even know what an XCode is.
Seems to match several of Apple's own docs:
"When you’re ready to share your app for user testing [...], you need
to create an archive of the app using a distribution provisioning
profile and send it to app testers" (source)
and
Code Signing with a development profile allows your app to run on
device through Xcode, and signing with a distribution profile allows
you to create distribution builds.
The certificate named "iPhone Developer" allows you to run/debug your
app on iOS devices through Xcode, and the certificate named "iPhone
Distribution" allows testing your submission build with Ad Hoc
distribution (source)
This seems to imply that using a distribution profile is necessary to do app sharing outside of the App Store, and for years I've always assumed this to be true. Recently however, I've been shown a use case from another colleague where they've been able to share builds with many other people using only a development provisioning file. Another user has described a similar discovery here: Why not use development provisioning instead of ad hoc?
I'm worried I might be missing something here, I'm now suspicious that there are cases where as long as another user has access to a relevant developer provisioning profile that includes their device's UUID, and installs it on their device (drag into iTunes, config utility, etc), that they would be able to sync Developer builds through iTunes as well, without the need for making separate Distribution builds.
This has led me to question some of the assumptions I've had about the nature of the differences between developer and distribution builds in general. I'm starting to think that it's more about debug support and general ease of installation, rather than the nature of how it's installed (XCode vs iTunes/OTA explicitly).
In short, if a device has it's UUID included in a developer provisioning profile, do I really need to make separate distribution builds, or can I simply share a Release Development build and assume that will work with an iTunes sync as well? Does the "Use for Development" button in organizer have any real relevance to this?
More broadly: what are the fundamental differences between Developer and AdHoc builds in terms of how they can be shared among other people within an organization in the development/testing phase before being submitted to the App Store?
Check this SO Post for the differences listed out between developer and distribution builds. From a developer perspective, there is not much difference whether you want to distribute your app either by signing it with a developer profile or distribution profile, provided you are not testing push notifications.
Can I send to my customer a beta version of my iOS app that he can run in the Simulator ?
Can I install Simulator only (without Xcode) on a Mac ?
I actually need an efficient methodology to send him the beta versions of the app, without having to meet him at each update.
Also, (3.) is there a way to install a beta version of the app, I developed in my xCode on its iOS device without app store ?
Thanks
No, I do not believe you can.
No, I don't think so. If you could, however, you'd also have to put all your source code on that machine and build your app there, just to run it in the simulator.
Yes, it's called an Ad Hoc build. You create a special provisioning profile through the provisioning portal on Apple's Developer portal. You then sign the build with that provisioning profile (actually, "Build and Archive"). Then you can, through the Xcode Organizer, share that build via e-mail with your customer. The Organizer creates an .ipa file and includes it along with the provisioning profile into an e-mail message which you can then compose and send.
Edit: The Ad Hoc provisioning profile will, of course, need to include the UDID's of your customer's device(s) on which they would like to test. That is the missing piece here that ties it all together: UDIDs, Ad Hoc profile, signed app with that profile, e-mail it to the customer and they can install both files (ipa and profile) via iTunes.
Lots of documentation on this, right in the Developer portal.
TestFlightApp.com is a great way to easily manage and distribute beta tests and ad-hoc builds. It's nothing you couldn't do yourself, manually, but it really helps make it easy, and is free.