Cocoa Touch™ for iPhone® OS 3

Chapter 33. Code Signing Your Apps

In This Chapter

Understanding the provisioning process

Understanding the difference between development, distribution, and ad hoc provisioning

Distributing ad hoc builds

So, you've done it. You've learned it all, conquered iPhone OS 3, and you've written your killer app. Now there's just one more thing to learn: how to build an executable that can be uploaded to the App Store.

In the early days of iPhone OS development, this step was perhaps the most frightening to developers. They often felt like it was such a complicated process and so difficult to get right that they would have to resort to voodoo to ensure that the development gods were smiling upon them. They would joke about sacrificing a chicken, or about surrounding their computers with circles of ash, to ward off the evil development spirits. All of this for what should be one of the simpler parts of developing iPhone applications: the process of code signing.

Thankfully, newer versions of the iPhone SDK have improved the code signing process significantly. It's much easier and much simpler to understand today than it was then.

In this chapter, I'm going to guide you through the process of getting a development certificate, installing it in Xcode, and then building your application for distribution.

I'll also go over how to set up an ad hoc build, which you can use to distribute executables to beta testers who do not have Xcode installed.

Acquiring a Development Certificate

Before you can even think ...