From Accepted to Testing

[Chilibird]

So, after hearing of the many headaches and problems associated with setting xcode up to sign code, I have decided to create a bit of a journal here that details my efforts to get my app onto my iPod for testing. I'll edit this entry as I go through each step. Keep in mind that I am as new to this as anyone else.

Hopefully after I am done, this will provide a bit of a walk-through for anyone who comes here with code-signing problems.

Entry 1: Finally accepted into the program after a call to apple. Going through the process now. Clicked on the 'obtaining your certificate' tab. Reading as we speak.

Entry 2: Step 2- Go to Keychain Access to generate my certificate signing request. Pretty painless. The apple steps seem to outline it well enough.

Entry 3: Step 3- Go to the developer portal, and submit the request from the previous step for approval. Portal accepted with no issue, and I approved since I'm my own team leader.

Entry 4: Step 4- Download and install certificates. Need both the one I generated earlier, and the intermediate certificate it says. Downloaded both, clicked, and both installed with no issue.

I should be careful, though, as I hear this is where the problems start. The how-to on apple's site mentions saving the key to an external drive as a backup. I don't have a drive to do that with me, but I will when I get ahold of it.

Next step is setting up my device.

Entry 5: The instructions seem clear enough on how to do this. Open xcode to obtain the device ID, which then needs to be inputted into the portal. Worked without a hitch. The how-to can be a bit misleading it seems, as it refers to other things that it sounds like you have to do but you really don't.

Entry 6: Now onto AppID's. This is where I hear things get interesting, so here goes. The reading is a bit heavy, but it seems simple enough. com.myname.appname. To keep things simple, and since I'm not a prolific developer, I will settle for having to create unique ID's for each app that I make. SEEMS to have worked just fine. Now onto provisioning.

Entry 7: Once again, a bit of heavy reading. The premise seems to be that I am combining everything from the previous steps to create one file that I will use in XCode. Since I only had one device/name/App, I only have one choice for each. Guess there's no way to screw this up then :P

Entry 8: Reading while I wait for the profile to become available. It seems that what I do is download my profile and then drag it to xcode to install it. At least that's the FIRST thing the howto suggests. I have heard of this possibly being the source of some errors, so I am going to take the howto's last suggestion and manually copy the .mobileprovision to ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/.

Now that that's there, we can move onto the big test. The actual building of the app itself. I should probably add here that I quit xCode after I got my device ID, as to ensure that xCode finds my provisioning profile.

Entry 9: Now the big test. First, I go to my build settings and set the code signing identity to iPhoneDeveloper: myFirstName myLastName. I should note that my profile automatically showed up under the list when selected, saving me from having to type the stuff above. Next, I select my provisioning profile.

Here we seem to have hit a wall. The spot that apple mentions for the provisioning profile is nowhere to be found. I went back to the organizer and added the provisioning profile to my iPod manually. Hopefully that works.

Entry 10: D'oh! As has befallen many before, I have gotten the dreaded "Application Verification Failed" error. I am now going over my steps to see what I can fix.

Ah hah! I don't know what I did, but it's started working now. Now to sort out some bugs that have cropped up on my device that the simulator didn't have!

Hopefully this provides some help to anyone who stumbles into some problem along the way.

-CB