Ad-hoc iOS distribution.
Ad hoc distribution lets us install internal builds of iOS apps on up to 100 registered devices of a type per year. We mostly run video software on iPhones and iPads. This page contains notes I use when adding devices and distributing test apps to users.
Register a device
Devices are added to your account at https://developer.apple.com. In order to add a device, you need its UDID. The UDID is different from the Serial Number or IEMI. There are many ways of obtaining the UDID. I use Device Manager on Windows 10 and Finder on macOs.
Getting a UDID on Windows
- Connect your iOS device to a Windows machine’s USB port
- Open Device Manager
- expand “Universal Serial Bus devices”
- get the properties for “Apple Mobile Device USB composite Deice”
- go to the “Details” tab
- select “Device Instance path”
Getting a UDID on macOS
- Connect your iOS device to your mac’s USB port
- Open Finder
- Select your device on the left,
- The device name is displayed at the top. Click at it to get the UDID.
Adding to your dev pool
Log into your developer account at Apple and add to the device list
Generate .ipa With XCode
- In your XCode window change the target to
Any iOS Device (arm64)
- Open the
Productmenu and selectArchive. This tells XCode to build an archive for distribution.
This may take awhile.
- When the archive is ready, XCode will open a dialog box listing the archives it has created. Select the Archive you just created and press the ‘Distribute App’ button.
- In the “Select a method of distribution” dialog box select ‘Ad Hoc’ and press
Next
- In the “Ad Hoc distribution option:” dialog box, set the following values.
- App Thinning: None
- Additional Options:
- Strip Swift Symbols : checked
- Include manifest for over-the-air installation: checked
and press Next
- In the “Distribution manifest information:” dialog set the name and URLs for each field. In my case, I have the following values.
- Name: FX Video Streamer
- App URL: https://www.greggallardo.com/apps/fxvs/FXVideoStreamer.ipa
- Display Image URL: https://www.greggallardo.com/apps/fxvs/image.57x57.png
- Full Size Image URL: https://www.greggallardo.com/apps/fxvs/image.512x512.png The URLS must match the location of the files in your web server.
and press Next
- In the “Re-sign” dialog box select ‘Automatically Manage Signing’ and press
Next
XCode will connect with Apple’s servers to sign the distribution files. This may take a long while.
When it finishes, it will list information about the App. Press Export to select the output folder location.
After exporting the app, you’ll have a folder containing the files for distribution. Transfer the generated files to your webserver for distribution. On your server, you’ll need to make sure names match the files mentioned in manifest.plist.
Ad-Hoc Web Server Deployment
You can use any web server to deploy the app. For simple deployments, I just use Python 3.
A quick and dirty web server with SSL can look like this:
from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler, SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
import ssl
httpd = HTTPServer(('0.0.0.0', 3000), SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
httpd.socket = ssl.wrap_socket (httpd.socket,
keyfile="../privkey.pem",
certfile='../cert.pem', server_side=True)
httpd.serve_forever()Use <a href="itms-services: to create a link to download your app to an iOS device.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Test Mobile Apps</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Test Video Stream App</p>
<a href="itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://www.greggallardo.com/apps/fxvs/manifest.plist">Install App</a>
</body>
</html>The directory structure for this server looks like this:
deploy@bossy:~/ios$ find .
.
./server.py
./privkey.pem
./server
./server/index.html
./server/apps
./server/apps/fxvs
./server/apps/fxvs/facex_logo_75.png
./server/apps/fxvs/Packaging.log
./server/apps/fxvs/ExportOptions.plist
./server/apps/fxvs/manifest.plist
./server/apps/fxvs/DistributionSummary.plist
./server/apps/fxvs/facex_logo_512.png
./server/apps/fxvs/FXVideoStreamer.ipa
./cert.pem
