Developing iOS apps on Windows¶
Forge allows the development of iOS apps on Windows without the use of an OS X machine. To do this you will need a development-enabled physical iOS device and an iOS developer account. In order to sign your application (which is required to install it onto the device, even for testing), we provide a remote signing service, which your app will be sent to, signed and returned as part of the forge run ios and forge package ios command.
Note
Your iOS device must be enabled for development before our Windows tools can view logging output. This means attaching it to an OS X machine and selecting "Enable for development" in the Xcode organizer.
If you're not able to do this, you can still install apps onto the device, and use the iPhone Configuration Utility to view log output (http://support.apple.com/downloads/#iphone)
Setting up Forge to run iOS apps¶
Requirements:
- Apple iOS developer account.
- iTunes or iPhone Configuration Utility installed on the machine you are going to develop on
- An iOS device connected via USB to the machine you wish to develop on
In order to sign your application you need to provide us with the following:
- A signing certificate and password
- A provisioning profile
Both of these can be created and managed from the Apple iOS provisioning portal, which should be accessible from the iOS developer center: https://developer.apple.com/ios/. The instructions on that site are for OS X, more detailed instructions for creating a developer certificate on Windows are included below.
Once these are setup you should be able to use forge run ios to install the app on your device and see log output in the terminal on your computer.
Creating a signing certificate¶
To create a certificate you need to generate a certificate signing request, in Windows this can be done by following these steps:
Create a file request.txt with the following content, replacing Connor Dunn with the name registered to your Apple Developer account:
[NewRequest] Subject="cn=Connor Dunn,o=User" RequestType=pkcs10 KeyLength=2048 Exportable=TRUE
Run the following command in the same directory as request.txt: certreq -new request.txt
On the iOS provisioning portal site choose to create a new certificate and upload the file you just created
Your certificate request should be approved shortly: when it is, download and open the certificate file. Windows should prompt you to install the certificate.
Once installed, run the command certmgr.msc: this should open a certificate management tool. In this tool browse to Personal certificates, you should see the iPhone Developer certificate you just installed.
You should be able to right click on the certificate and choose All tasks -> Export. Make sure you export the private key as part of the certificate when following the wizard. The password you supply will be the one you need to provide to Forge, and prevents unauthorized users from using the certificate if they were to come into possession of the certificate file.
You should now be able to configure the developer_certificate_path and developer_certificate_password in your local_config.json file.
Note
See Configuration for the tools for more information on your local_config.json file.
Creating a provisioning profile¶
Once you have created a certificate you need to create a provisioning profile, this is also done via the iOS provisioning portal website:
- First make sure your device has been added to the provisioning portal, to do this you will need the device identifier (UDID), this can be found by clicking on the device's serial number in iTunes.
- Next create an app id, for development entering * as a Bundle Identifier is recommended, as it means multiple apps can be signed with a single provisioning profile.
- Finally create a development provisioning profile, making sure you choose the correct app id and enable any devices you wish to be able to test with.
- You can now download and configure the location of your provisioning profile in local_config.json.
Note
Provisioning profiles must be recreated if certificates or devices are changed.