Trying to work out the best way to get this app onto our game designers phone for testing. He lives overseas but it is vital we can start to send him builds to test and provide feedback (after all he is the game designer, up until now its all been done via videos sent to him but we are nearing the end and he really needs to play it himself)
The two options I can see are,
we jailbreak his phone, install some app installer, pass the .app file across email etc
we set him up with xcode / sdk and send him entire xcode packages
Id prefer not to have to jailbreak his phone and everywhere I read about it I see people talking about installing cracked versions of games, would this mean unless our .app was also ‘cracked’ that it would not install via this method?
With option 2 would this even work or would we need unity installed on his machine too. Its a bit of expense to get him setup with a unity license just so he can test our app on his iphone. At first I thought it is a possibility but then I recalled the trampoline project etc. and how the default.png is copied from there which leads me to think the xcode project + sdk install might not be enough.
Has anyone else come across this problem? We are desperate and short of fed-ex’ing handsets back and forth across the world with new builds of the game on it we are unsure of any other reliable / easy way to do this.
I’m for option 3: he sends you his device id or comes over and connects to your pc so you can get it.
then you setup new provisions that include his device and from that point on you just send him the builds with that provision (and naturally have to send that provision to him as well)
he can install them through just dropping them into the itunes library
Thanks Dreamora. I didn’t even know you call install apps by dropping them into itunes let alone embed provisioning into a build. We actually just bought an ipod touch 2g to test on so may as well send him that with the game on it once we have confirmed the itunes drop / install is all going well and provisioning is setup.
Im a little bit confused tho. I thought the provisioning was used to ‘open’ the connection to the phone, I didn’t realise that the builds had a provisioning thumbprint in them which itunes could match to the handset. How does this work when you submit to the App store? Do they do something to the builds to switch it from your own development provisioning to allow the rest of the world to install the game? Is there anything else involved in your process you described like setting up provisioning certificates at his end?
If I have my mate’s iPhone’s Id, add that to the developer’s profile before I download it and then use that profile to build the app… Then I can just sip up the file for him and mail it to him. He can then drop it in itunes and it will install it onto his phone even though his phone does not have the provisioning profile on it?
No, add your mates id to your ad-hoc distribution profile (not the dev one). Use it to sign your build in xcode as usual then send your mate both the ad-hoc distrib profile and the zipped build. Both items are required.
i suggest to read iPhone program portal user guide, it’s located in the top right in the first page of ADC program portal.
You need only the UDID’s of iPhone or iPod touch devices, then you can bulid AD HOC version in Xcode and finally just send the app and the provisioning profile. All details in the guide.
You read that entirely wrong. The Enterprise App Store ($250) is for distributing your final release apps within an enterprise (i.e. very big company). You don’t need that.
The regular $99 Developer program lets you distribute “Ad Hoc” builds for beta testing. You can add up to 100 device IDs per year (that is to say, once added, a device ID can’t be removed for a year – it’s a limitation set to keep developers from making ad-hoc builds and distributing app outside the App Store).
Unity iPhone is a superset of regular iPhone development, not a subset. You should really spend the time to read all of the “getting started” docs on Apple’s web site.
I’ve been having massive trouble with this and I hope it works after this…
Though I don’t understand the need for sending the beta-testers the provisioning profile… ? without the correct certificate on their machines it will do squat… surely… is there something I’m missing or a step that is so obvious it hasn’t been mentioned?
The profile matches an app ID (or *) to a device ID, or set of device IDs. Your phone will not run an app that is unsigned without a profile giving that app ID permission to run.
To send ad hoc builds to someone who’s ID you’ve added to a profile, all you need to send is the Application.app (zipped up) and the provisioning profile that matches that app ID and device ID.
I use a continuous build server that watches a repository and, when there’s a commit, updates and builds the project to an .ipa file, zips up the built app and provisioning profile, and scp’s the zip to a web server. This way clients always have the latest code, and if they don’t happen to have the profile when they need it, it’s always there.