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I'm developing a sophisticated engineering calculation iPad app for a specific customer (much like the poster of this question). I'm getting ready to release a first version to them, and trying to get this distribution issue sorted out. There are pretty much 5 methods covered throughout that post (general App Store, B2B, Enterprise, Ad Hoc, and stuff requiring Jail Breaking), and most of the searching I've done has shown those same 5 options. I've been looking into TestFlight to manage the Ad Hoc distribution for beta testing right now, but down the road I'm going to need to allow my customer to mass install my app onto as many devices as desired (hopefully without needing to involve me at all by that point). So in the end, none of these 5 options are really attractive as a final solution.

A colleague found this App Doc that mentions something call packagemaker, which sounds like it's a Terminal tool, but I can't really find much on it (the Apple Doc simply says "create the package as you normally do", which is pretty much meaningless since I normally don't - and everything else I can find is from around 2009, and I've learned that anything described in those old posts is almost certainly wrong by this point when it comes to the Apple world). From what I can tell, packagemaker should let me build an installer executable that I can send to my customer, and they could just run that installer and it would put the app on their device. This is how we currently distribute similar software for Windows environment devices, and it would be ideal for what I'm trying to do.

Does anyone know if packagemaker can be used as I've described to install iOS apps? If so, can anyone point me toward a beginner-orientated tutorial on how to use it?

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GeneralMike
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1 Answers1

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Packagemaker sounds like overkill. The old tuts should still work though, it hasn't changed much (or at all) since 10.5. It's a separate download from Apple Developer center.

You could use testflight, though I presume you want to install B2B apps, and not ad-hoc apps for testing.

In that case just create a bash script that builds and/or deploys your app to a connected device with xcodebuild and related tools. If you're concerned that your end user will find Terminal use appalling, write a tiny Cocoa app to support & run the script, and put the script and your iPad app into the bundle.

For example the app's User Interface could query the user for paths, the device, and whatever is necessary to deploy your app and pass it to the bash script which you can run easily with NSTask.

This is certainly going to be many times faster than getting into PackageMaker, and figuring out how it works - cause it really doesn't work in a straightforward way, unfortunately.

CodeSmile
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  • Thanks for the reply. I'm probably going to use testflight for now to quickly get a version to my customer for him to beta test, but what I'm really looking for in this question is a method to mass distribute the final version once the beta testing is done with - I'll update my OP to reflect that. – GeneralMike May 22 '13 at 19:27
  • So if I understand what you're suggesting correctly, I'll build my own installer that runs on an OSX machine, which has my iOS app built into it. My customer will then need plug his iPad into an OSX machine and run the installer I wrote, and that will let the app run on that connected iPad. For multiple iPads, each one will need to be connected and the installer will need to re-run. Do I have the gist of it right? Like I said, I'm very new to developing on a Mac, and I want to make sure I have the right idea before going any further. – GeneralMike May 22 '13 at 19:45
  • I don't know how B2B/Enterprise distribution works. I'm pretty sure though there's got to be some way to host the signed app in one location and push it onto all (registered) devices. Because that would be a requirement for any enterprise. What I suggest is if that process is the least bit user-unfriendly, wrap it into a neat GUI app. – CodeSmile May 22 '13 at 20:38
  • check this question and its duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1568360/iphone-application-enterprise-distribution-process – CodeSmile May 22 '13 at 20:40
  • B2B and Enterprise distribution are both handled by Apple. I'm looking for something that would be an alternative to those methods, not an enhancement of them. – GeneralMike May 24 '13 at 14:48