Our firm has begun building MonoTouch iPad/iPhone apps for enterprise deployment.
How do I take the app and create a *.ipa file for upload to our MDM server?
An .ipa file is basically a glorified .zip file. There are a couple of routes you can go down:
Export the project to xcode and under "Build" click "Build and Archive" - fill in the appropriate details and the project should create the .ipa for you as expected.
If this isn't an option, (which it isnt for us, so this is the method I've used, to great success) you can simply create all the components that go into the .ipa and right-click, "Compress..." in Finder.
The .ipa is made up of the following components:
A folder named "Payload", which contains the compiled (release/iPhone) .app
a 57x57 .png icon file (which is displayed while the app is being downloaded)
a 512x512 .png file of the icon once again - however this has to renamed itunesartwork with no extension
iTunesMetadata.plist - this contains information about the app, such as copyright name, genre, itemname, softwareIconNeedsShine (you can google what information this needs).
The way I package up our .ipa, is I have a folder called "App Packaging" which has all of these components already in, and I simply update the .app file whenever we do an upload, "Compress..." then rename the file to x.ipa (OS X will ask if you want to use this extension, make sure you select ("use .ipa" !).
With the current Monodevelop (2.8.6.5) and Monotouch (5.2.5) it is as easy as right clicking on your project -> options -> iPhone IPA Options -> check Build ad-hoc/enterprise package (IPA) for the desired configuration.
We created a special configuration called Distribution which builds using the Distribution Certificate and In House Distribution Profile.
Luke, I like your answer and have given you the credit. I am adding some more details for my own, and others, notes.
Use SpotLight to find one of your own MonoTouch apps. Search on ".ipa".
Rename it to SomeThing.Zip
Unzip it.
You can then use the structure of the unzipped folder to edit then rezip.
Just another way to get an IPA that made it easy for me, drag your .app file onto your itunes library and sync your device. ITunes then creates a copy of the app as an .ipa file in the user/music/itunes/itunes media/mobile applications. This can then be distributed much easier than the .app file.
Related
Hi DocuSign CLM geeks and the DocuSign API in-house team-
Our team will be using DocuSign CLM with the DocuSign Edit add-on to easily open Microsoft Word files and save back to CLM.
We'd like to include the installation of DocuSign Edit in our Silent Mode installation configuration. We're hoping there's an msi File available for the DocuSign Edit extension? If so, please link!
Plan B- If we were to make our own msi from the available exe, does anyone have a trail stomped out for doing this? (a blog post, documentation, step by step, video demo, even a horror story)
Thanks for tips.
https://tools.springcm.com/sites/default/files/apps/docusign-edit-pc-2.01.00.exe
This is an exe that is built from an MSI, so it is an MSI.
If you want to get the MSI out of this https://www.codetwo.com/kb/msi-from-exe/:
The first method is based on the fact that most installers extract their .msi files to the temporary files folder during the installation process. To extract an MSI file from an EXE installer, you need to:
Launch your .exe file.
When you see the first prompt (e.g. a question about whether you want to continue installation, accept a license agreement, etc.), do not click anything in this window and do not close it.
Open Windows Explorer, type %temp% in the address bar and press Enter.
Sort the files in the folder by the modification date. The newest file on the list should be the .msi file you are looking for.
Copy the MSI file to a safe location before you close the installer prompt window (see step 2). Be aware that if you close the installer window, the MSI file will be immediately deleted from the temporary files folder.
The second method uses a free third-party tool called 7-Zip to browse the content of the .exe installer file. Follow the steps below.
Download 7-Zip from this page and install it.
Right-click on the .exe file (from which you want to extract an .msi file) and from the shortcut menu choose 7-Zip > Open Archive.
Do not extract any files yet. Instead, browse and look for the folder MSI within the contents. It might take some time to find this folder because it is not always located directly in the root directory (its location may vary depending on the installer).
When you locate the MSI folder, you will notice that it most likely does not contain any .msi files, but a file or files with no extensions and rather cryptic names such as 132. Despite these misleading names, these are actually the MSI files you are looking for.
Drag and drop these files to any desired folder or select them and extract them with 7-Zip. Close 7-Zip after that.
Change the names of the extracted files so that they include the .msi extension.
If there are two files, the larger one is the 64-bit installer, and the smaller one is the 32-bit version. Use the one you need.
Finally, if you want to tweak an MSI, you can use the Orca tool by Microsoft - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/orca-exe
My requirement is to edit a .xap file which is already in the IIS Manager.. when install another web application on IIS manager. (I want to add the end points of a web application in the previous web application .xap file)
You could write a custom action to:
Open the .xap file (it's a .zip file named differently)
Extract the file(s) that need to be modified
Edit the extracted file(s)
Re-zip the extracted file(s) back into the .xap file.
You could find the existing .xap file using AppSearch of some sort. Maybe a FileSearch element. Most of the work is going to be in your custom action though. Good luck!
Please see Mike's answer over at:
NSIS Changing config file present in XAP file i.e. silverlight component build
There's two parts here:
1) Authoring the Silverlight application to use an external config file.
2) Authoring your installer to update that config file. In this case of WiX, it's the XmlConfig element in the Util extension.
The reasons for doing it this way is to have a highly reliable installer. If you write custom actions to extract, edit and compress the XAP you'll invalidate digital signatures and introduce complexity and fragility to your deployment process. Avoiding the temptation to do all this and just use XmlConfig gives you a robust, declarative installation that fully supports the Windows Installer rollback story.
In my project files marshalling shown below ,Mono Develop doesn't show Images directory(group) in XCode and they are not seen on xib interfaces,also crashes on runtime. But when I put images under Project's root directory works fine!
Fine! But seeing dozens of images on root directory make things confusing.
Here goes details;
My images built actions are content.
I have tried adding them to Xcode by creating a group named Images then this time all images copied to Mono Develop's root again.
Am I missing something?
Project
--Images
---- FaceOff.Png
---- icons
---------CandyButton32x.png
I think you are experiencing a limitation of the XCode integration with MonoDevelop.
Images only show up in XCode if they are in the root directory of your project. To combat this, there are two ways you can setup your image folders for MonoTouch projects:
Use build action Content, put your images anywhere, but they will only show up in XCode if they are in the root of the project
Use the build action BundleResource and put all your images in the Resources folder, this is the same as putting your images in the root of the project, but you get to package them nicely in a subfolder
I have not experimented with BundleResource and XCode to see if subfolders work via that method or not.
This is from my experience, someone from Xamarin, feel free to chime in.
Further to Jonathan's great answer, I have a nice organised setup for my images using BundleResource and the Resources Folder.
On the filesystem I have all my images in a nice directory structure, for example: img/common/title.png.
I then add all the image files (not directories) into the iOS project Resources folder, using the 'Add Files' option and selecting BundleResource for the files I select.
When given the copy, move or link option, because my files are outside the target directory, I select the 'Add a link to the file' option.
This procedure allows me to:
Happily keep all my images in an organised directory structure on the file system
Have access to them in XCode Interface Builder
Access them as root when in code, such as Image.FromFile("title.png")
Easily update them in the filesystem and have them automatically change in Xamarin Studio
I created my iPhone app with MonoTouch and deployed it to the AppStore. Now I want to add a free lite version of the same app. What is the best way to do this with MonoTouch/MonoDevelop?
So far I created a new Provisioning Profile for the lite version. I can change the build options to use the full or the lite profile. But what else do I have to change and how? I think at least the app name should be changed, but how???
Thanks,
Christian
The way I do these things is to create a new project, then add the existing c# files from the first project as a link. You will see this option on the "add existing file" dialog. Keep in mind all your Icon/Splash screen files will have to be copied though, MonoDevelop doesn't handle these right if they are linked.
Just a side note, you can get by with less provisioning profiles. Create one as com.yourcompany.*, then name your apps com.yourcompany.yourapp1, yourapp2, etc.
So I have a profile for Development, AdHoc, and AppStore, but I have several apps deployed.
Rather than link files, I prefer to make three projects: A library project which will have all the UILogic called X.Touch.Core and two more which will have a reference of the Core. X.Touch.Lite and X.Touch.Premium. This way you don't need to have linked files, it can be painful. You can put a file called settings.xml and perform some feature toggling there.
I am trying to archive my MonoTouch app and to supply it to our testers using Apple's/Xcode's organizer.
Can somebody tell me how to do that? In ObjC projects I can archive an application. But how can I achieve the same in MT/MonoDevelop?
My starting point was this documentation:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Xcode/Conceptual/iphone_development/145-Distributing_Applications/distributing_applications.html
René
The archive that Xcode provides is in the form of an .ipa file. This is a glorified zip file with a certain expected file structure.
The .ipa is made up of the following components:
A folder named "Payload", which contains the compiled
(release/iPhone) .app
a 57x57 .png icon file (which is displayed while the app is being
downloaded)
a 512x512 .png file of the icon once again - however this has to
renamed itunesartwork with no extension
iTunesMetadata.plist - this contains information about the app,
such as copyright name, genre, itemname, softwareIconNeedsShine (you
can google what information this needs).
The way I package up our .ipa, is I have a folder called "App Packaging" which has all of these components already in, and I simply update the .app file whenever we do an upload, "Compress..." then rename the file to x.ipa (OS X will ask if you want to use this extension, make sure you select ("use .ipa" !).
You can then send the file to the testers to install via itunes. If the testers are all testing on devices that are iOS 4.0+ then it is possible to distribute this over the air as well but I can go into that only if you would like me to?
EDIT - Over the air distribution
It is possible to do over the air distribution of apps as well. We use it for distribution of an enterprise app we develop but it is possible to use it for testing purposes as well. It should be noted here that in order for the app to installed, the device needs to be included in the provisioning profile you signed the app with (but you knew that already!).
In order to do over the air, you need 3 things:
the .ipa file we created earlier.
a 57x57 .png icon file (same as the one included in the .ipa preferably)
a file called "Manifest.plist"
The Manifest plist contains the following structure/information:
You'll then want to upload all of these files to your website/intranet etc. In order to download the app, you'll need to create a page that points to the Manifest.plist file and then then iOS takes care of the rest and downloads the app from the location specified in the manifest.
There is now a much much easier way. On the Project menu in MonoDevelop, choose Publish to TestFlight.
You'll need a free TestFlightApp.com account, but it works great!