Provisioning Profiles

OK. So, now I'm enrolled. I've done 7 apps on the iPhone Simulator as part of my switch-over training (I'm going through the tutorials in Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK ) And, like everyone else who had to wait a long time for their company to get enrolled, I was dying to see some of the sample apps run on my real iPhone instead of the simulator.

The process to do this is much more involved than one would think. I spent about 3 hours figuring it out, and then it took me all of 10 minutes to talk Russ (my co-worker) through doing it on his Mac/iPhone.

To give the context, let me put this a simply as I can:

There are 3 components contained in a Provisioning Profile:

1. Who can sign the code - (the valid Certificates)
2. Which Application it's a profile for - (the App ID)
3. What devices can install the App - (the Devices)

You need to create each of these components in order to create a Provisioning Profile that you can install on your development machine.

I started by watching the videos on the right side of the iPhone Developer Program Portal. I found them to be very helpful, though they are missing some important information.

Here are a couple other sites that were very useful in figuring out how to create and install Certificates, AppIDs, Devices, and Provisioning Profiles:

• http://www.talentgrouplabs.com/blog/archive/2008/08/21/preflightingapplication-errors-0xe8000001-and-others.aspx
• http://www.lensenergy.com/archives/2009/01/iphone-dev-tip1---applicationv.html

We got our Provisioning Profile installed and working with most of the apps that we had created in the tutorials. (As a side note: we used a wildcard App ID.)

I did have a problem with one of my projects that I had created in xCode. I did everything exactly the same in all the projects I set up for my phone. However, in one project, I get the following error EVERY time I try to Build and Run, regardless of if I have cleaned all targets or not:

Your mobile device has encountered an unexpected error (0xE800003A)
ApplicationVerificationFailed

I know I did everything exactly the same. There must be something different about the project file or something I'm including as a resource or something. I don't know, but I'd sure like to get it figured out. I spent way too long on it last night.

Anyway, this process was not as easy as I would have preferred, but, considering the newness of the SDK, it wasn't horrible.