Is it possible to create a .ipa without a distribution certificate?

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Piepants OP

Created 1d

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I have a developer certificate but not a distribution certificate (its not my Apple account).

Its possible to create an .xcarchive with a developer certificate, but what about a .ipa? After creating an archive, non of the distribution options within XCode will work without a dist cert. Is there another way to make an .ipa with just a dev cert? And if so is that going to be a dev build rather than a prod build (i.e. the .ipa would only install onto provisioned devices and would be no good for uploading to testflight for example)

Answered by DTS Engineer in 821665022

You can export an .ipa from Xcode signed for development work. From the Organizer, the path to that option is Distribute App > Debugging. This will use your development certificates instead of distribution certificates, and keeps the get-task-allow entitlement enabled, which allows you to connect LLDB to your app's process for debugging even after installing from the .ipa file instead of the more common Build and Run workflow in Xcode.

—Ed Ford,  DTS Engineer

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Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

1d

Recommended

You can export an .ipa from Xcode signed for development work. From the Organizer, the path to that option is Distribute App > Debugging. This will use your development certificates instead of distribution certificates, and keeps the get-task-allow entitlement enabled, which allows you to connect LLDB to your app's process for debugging even after installing from the .ipa file instead of the more common Build and Run workflow in Xcode.

—Ed Ford,  DTS Engineer

0

Answer 2

mungbeans OP

1d

@Ed Ford

Thank you. This .ipa wouldn't be upload able to Testflight presumably? But if it were, and if it used pushes, then it wouldn't be compatible anyway as it would be a developer build and hence configured to use the APNS sandbox rather than the Prod environment?

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Answer 3

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

1d

This .ipa wouldn't be upload able to Testflight presumably?

It would not. Submitting to TestFlight is like submitting to the App Store, in the sense that the same Distribution signing assets are required for both, and the Debugging export option here does not qualify because development signing and distribution signing the .ipa are mutually exclusive choices.

—Ed Ford,  DTS Engineer

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