I got a nice new iPhone to do some debugging on and I'm trying to run my application from Xcode on the new phone. When I run the application it fails and in the "Details" of the failure it tells me that the provisioning profile is invalid:
"A valid provisioning profile for this executable was not found"
Using "Automatically Manage Signing" and choosing my development team, when I click on the little (i) button next to "Xcode managed Profile" I see all check marks. Xcode seems to think I have everything I need. I do see my device listed in the supported devices area.
I have turned "Automatically Manage Signing" off and on (to regenerate the profile) and I've tried manually copying the profile to the phone (emailing it to myself, and using AirDrop). The phone complains that the profile is invalid.
Kicking it old school, I went to my account and created a new development signing certificate, and a provisioning profile that includes my device. I tried using Xcode with the manual certificate and profile and got the same result.
All in all it looks like my phone refuses to accept a provisioning profile. Is there anything more I can try to allow me to use my device for debugging.
(I have tried using Xcode 14 and 14.1b5, and while my phone is running both 16.1b4 and 16.1b5).
I eventually figured out what was happening.
After re-reading the provisioning profile tech note, my eye caught on the paragraph which says that previously the user would install a provisioning profile accessible through the Settings on the phone, but modern iOS applications should have their provisioning profiles inside the app bundle in a file called "embedded.mobileprovision".
In iOS 16.1, in the settings, I see provisioning profiles for things like Apple's beta software, but haven't gotten iOS 16.1 to install a new application profile. Perhaps that functionality has been removed? YMMV.
At any rate, being thoroughly modern (ha!) my application, when built, should contain an "embedded.mobileprovision" file. But upon digging in the DerivedData folder and looking in the app package - it didn't. Odd.
I looked at the build transcript and clearly saw a step that was supposed to put that file into the bundle.
So then I looked at our build phases. To make a long story even longer, our application has a history that includes Ionic/Angular and Cordova. There was a script that copies the Ionic/Angular html files into the app bundle. I speculate that you use the Cordova build process then it will build the application using Xcode, then delete the signing that Xcode has done, copy the www folder into the bundle, then re-sign the result.
Since we don't use the whole Cordova build process, the script was copying in the www files, then deleting the code signing, including the embedded.mobileprovision file... but need replacing it.
I deleted the Cordova script, used a Copy Files build phase to get the HTML into the bundle, and let Xcode code sign the application.
