Customizing Builds for Distribution and Advanced Development - Xcode 4 - page 341

Although it was introduced as an enterprise tool, all developers can use this feature, but the packaging process
for creating the support files for an OTA app is moderately complex. In addition to the ipa file, the link re-
quires some basic HTML and a supporting plist manifest file with details of the app. Creating the HTML is
easy, but creating the manifest plist is more challenging.
Xcode 4 doesn't support this feature for standard developers, but various commercial workarounds are avail-
able. For example, diawi ( www.diawi.com ) is an ad-sponsored app that allows developers to upload test builds
to its website and e-mail links to testers. TestFlight ( http://testlightapp.com ) , shown in Figure 13.20, is a simil-
ar alternative. These options make OTA distribution almost as easy as drag and drop.
FIGURE 13.20
TestFlight: one way to create an OTA distribution for beta testers
Developers who don't want to entrust their files to a third party can use iOS BetaBuilder ( www.hanchorllc.com/
category/ios-betabuilder/ ) to create custom HTML and manifest files for distribution from their own web server.
BetaBuilder loads an ipa file and generates supporting HTML and a manifest plist tied to a specific down-
load URL. You can then upload the files to a server and e-mail testers the URL. At the time of this writing, a
supporting app is being developed.
Note that although official enterprise OTA doesn't require device registration, standard developers must still re-
gister devices and include them in every Ad Hoc distribution profile.
CAUTION