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My team is developing an iPhone app, and we just discovered that we can distribute an archived version signed with the development provisioning profile instead of a distribution profile for testing. We just had to add the device IDs to our dev profile.

This clearly saved us the trouble of following various steps needed for ad-hoc distribution including entitlements.plist file.

My question is- If we can distribute the app with dev certificate, then what is the need of a distribution profile for testers (not part of dev team)?

Is there any disadvantage of adding the device IDs to development profile?

Since the total devices limit is 100, what advantage does a separate distribution profile gives?

Richard Slater
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Sailesh
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2 Answers2

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I suspect that because Xcode is hiding some of the complexity of a development profile from you, you think something's happening that's not.

Your development profile still has the UUIDs of all the target devices in it. And those devices have to be provisioned for development and actually installed to from Xcode. It's really not that different in terms of setup and limitations, except that Xcode is mostly doing the config work for you.

The other limitation is that a provisioning profile for development expires much sooner than an ad hoc deployment certificate.

I recommend testflightapp.com, a SUPER easy way of deploying ad hoc builds to testers.

Dan Ray
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    testflightapp.com always a good idea. (upvote) – rckoenes Apr 15 '11 at 11:53
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    I m sorry but I couldn't connect your reply with any of my question. And creating ad-hoc distribution build is not much of a problem. I was just exploring the need of a separate one. – Sailesh Apr 15 '11 at 11:56
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Well you could create different ad-hoc profiles per client, so that only that client can install the app.

More threads on the same question: Why not use development provisioning instead of ad hoc? Do I need to make an Ad Hoc Provisioning Profile to debug my app on my iPhone?

Community
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rckoenes
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