iPhone Dev Tip: Breaking the AdHoc Provisioning Nightmare on Windows

Posted by Mugunth Kumar on Jun 22, 2010 in Tech

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Anti-DRM fans might quip, but iPhone Developers love this digital signatures and provisioning as it reduces piracy dramatically. But all these aren’t free. Provisioning comes with a cost, especially when you write a iPhone app and want to share it with your friends/clients for beta testing. Apple has an excellent documentation on how to do an AdHoc build. Yet still, most users stumble upon especially when they have to make a build and send it to their testers/clients who are on Windows I’m not going to rewrite the entire AdHoc provisioning process here. This post is exclusively for iPhone developers whose testers/clients are Windows users who would like to provision the beta versions onto their iPhones using iTunes on Windows.

As usual, you prepare a AdHoc build and zip the .app bundle, attach it to the email along with the mobile provisioning profile and send it to your customer. On macs, things are pretty straight forward. On Windows, however, your customers are prone to fall into these common pitfalls which might cause a troublesome nightmare for you.

First Pitfall:
Extracting the .zip file you sent using Windows Explorer’s built in Compression Engine.

I repeat. DON’T DON’T DON’T extract the zip file using the Windows’ explorer’s built in “Extract Here” command. The default compression engine bundled with Windows messes up the CRCs by adding temporary files into the .app bundle. Ask your testers to use a better de-compression tool like 7-Zip, WinZip or WinRar.

Second Pitfall:
Opening the .app folder out of “curiosity” to “see” what’s inside.

Never double-click and “open” the extracted .app “folder” (On windows the .app bundle appears as a folder) . Windows is a sh**. I agree. It automatically creates a “Thumbs.db/Desktop.ini/folder.htt” (some created by Virus, some by Windows) file whenever you access a folder and that again changes the CRC of the bundle. Just drag the .app “folder” immediately after extracting into iTunes. Also drag the provisioning profile into iTunes and sync the app.

If you think your users’ might not follow all these steps, you can send them the .IPA file instead of the compressed .app bundle. This .IPA file can be generated on your mac by dragging the .app bundle into iTunes. When you drag the .app bundle into your iTunes library, it internally creates a .IPA file. This IPA file can be located in Finder from iTunes. Just Cmd click your app on iTunes and click “Show in Finder”. Send this .IPA file (and the mobile provisioning file) to your testers.

Hope that clears the air around AdHoc provisioning on Windows.

–
Mugunth

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