Profiles and certificates: How my Mac mini was tossed at the wall

[ratty]

These things are driving me INSANE! I cannot believe how convoluted this stuff is. I have done everything in every 'how to' I have read. I cannot for the life of me get this working. It won't archive due to missing unexpired provisioning certificates, even though they are there. I've deleted and redoes loaded them but still have no luck. Now it used to archive...until it said there were no profiles available.

I'm not sure if this thread is asking for advice or just ranting. Either way, this junk is more frustrating than it needs to be. Building the app is easier than getting it to the app store!

[Popcorn]

I agree, it was very hard to find a decent guide.

Here's a little how-to just to confuse you even more

On the Provisioning Portal, select Provisioning / Distribution / New profile and then download the profile.

On your Mac, drag the profile-file onto the Xcode icon at the bottom of the screen.

In Xcode, in the app properties, find TARGETS at the left and click on your app. I am so new to mac myself, I cant exactly explain what window this is. In Build Settings, select All and Combined, then scroll down to Code Signing. Here you'll select the provision profile you downloaded. Select Ad Hoc Distribution if you want to distribute to friends, and Release if you want to get it to App Store.

Finally, select Product / Archive, and you will be shown the distribute window, and here you can select how to distribute it and what Code Signing Identity to use.

[JasonDarby]

Keep with it Ratty, the profiles and certificates is pretty frustrating to start with, once you get it right once, you should be ok in the future... it's not a fun process, though Apple have improved it over the last couple of years.

[colej_uk]

I really hate this process too. Even though I've been developing on iOS almost a year now, I feel like I barely know how it all works.

[ratty]

Thanks for the encouragement / condolences / mutual misery, guys.

Popcorn, I've done that process but I run into issues. At first, I could archive but needed to choose an ID afterwards since it was supposedly missing. Now I can't even archive. It keeps telling me one code is signed incorrectly or another.

[ratty]

Ugh. Archiving used to just fail...now it's greyed out and unselectable. Pom just going to delete all the certificates and create a new build.

[Diablohead]

When first profiling my touch last summer it took me like half a day to work it out even with guides but with my ipad 3 a few months back xcode basically did it automatically for me in about 10 minutes just by plugging my device in.

[Evilized79]

It took me 4 whole days to understand it.

[DistantJ]

Ugh. Archiving used to just fail...now it's greyed out and unselectable. Pom just going to delete all the certificates and create a new build.

I think archiving becomes disabled (grey/unselectable) when you have it set to run on iOS device, I think you have to switch it back to simulator. Or vice versa.

It's a strange process, but I've found that to be the case in a lot of code signing situations. Getting on the Android Market is quite an awkward thing too... Stick at it, you'll get it!

[DTownTony]

DistantJ is right. Archive greyed out when its set to run on a simulator.....I spent like 5 hours figuring that one out lol