Managing iPhone app provisioning profiles

Question

I just created an iPhone app and am having friends try it out, but it seems like there's a lot of stuff that needs 'management' in order to have efficient development/test cycles. There are also a bunch of things which are only on my machine (the Keychain and my test cert that I use to create the app/provisioning profiles) which other developers on the team cannot use.

• How are folks managing the different kinds of iPhone certs and provisioning profiles?
• Any suggested best practices on how to efficiently build/test/provision app builds in ways that anyone from the team can do it?
• What exactly needs to be backed up in case I want to re-build my mac or use another mac to do developments/builds?
• Which of these artifacts are needed for actual deployment to the app store? Do I need to re-create certs, profiles etc or do I just re-use the ones I've created for development?

Answer 1

You can export a single file containing all of your certificates and provisioning profiles, which is the best way of managing your own bits.

For an app store build, you need a personal certificate, an app I'd (which can be generic if you aren't using push or the store), and a provisioning profile for the app store - only the latter is specific to your app store build.

Opinion: Apple's provisioning management is utter balls.

Answer 2

I work with several clients, each with there own certificates and app store accounts. I create a separate keychain with all the certificates and keys for each. You can pass these keychains around or back them up as needed.

For years, I had to set the default keychain each time I switched projects, but that is finally fixed.

As for the provisioning profiles themselves, there is not much to do. You can always go download a fresh one and these days they expire pretty quickly anyway.

@paull opinion: totally agree.