iOS How manage Certificates, App IDs, Provisioning Profiles

[Macintosh1984]

Hi!

What method suggest to use to manage Certificates, App IDs, Provisioning Profiles? What to do, for example, 2 certificates, one for Development, Production the other?

In the Common Name field, what public key you write? "Name Surname" whenever or "Name Surname Dev Key" and "Name Surname Distribution Key"

Do you crete a new certificate for every app you submitt?

Do you crete a iOS App IDs and Provisioning Profiles (Development) with wildcard for rapid development testing?

I am very uncertain...

 

[recoil80]

I have a distribution certificate and a development certificate.
I use a wildcard app id with one provisioning profile to test all my apps ad hoc but when it is time to deploy I create a certificate for each app, since push notifications need a certificate for a specific app id so I can do my final tests with PN.
I also have enterprise certificates from my enterprise customers and they're really convenient since I don't have to wait for Apple to approve the apps and I can deploy a new version in a couple of minutes.

 

[Macintosh1984]

Well…

1) create 1 Distribution Certificate
2) create 1 Development Certificate
In the Common Name field, what public key you write, in what format?

So, you create a new Certificate for every new app? I want to know better this.

AND

1 wildcard App IDs with 1 Provisioning Profile for testing on a device, it is true?

I can’t access to enterprise certificates.

What does the Revoke command of a Certificate, delete it from the list or not?

 

[recoil80]

On the certificates section you have Pending, Developement and Production.
In Development I have one single iOS Development certificate with my name, and I use it to sign the wildcard app id. Then I have several APNs Development certificate, since if you want to use push notifications you need to sign the app with a specific certificate.
So I test my apps with the wildcard app id, then when I need to test an app with push notification I create the APN certificate.
It is the same for production, I have my iOS distribution certificate to sign the apps and my APNs production certificates if I need to deploy an app with push notifications to the app store.

You can chose the name you like, the important thing is the app id. You can have the wildcard or you can have the complete app id. A APN certificate is bound to a specific app id, while the iOS development certificate allows you to sign all your apps to deploy ad hoc on the registered devices.
You also need to have provisioning profiles, but xcode can manage them for your.

Have a look at this link, I like the tutorials of Ray Wenderlich
https://www.raywenderlich.com/2915/ios-code-signing-under-the-hood

 

[Macintosh1984]

Thank you, everything is clear!

 

[AxoNeuron]

Before messing with Apple's provisioning system, make sure to buy a bottle of thorazine beforehand because it will drive you NUTS. Seriously, it's a buggy awful mess.

Takes a lot of patience and experience too. It's very confusing when dealing with Keychain because the errors Xcode provides during provisioning are utterly and completely useless, they don't provide details at all in many situations.

Something that confused me for a long time is that you need to make sure you have the public AND private certificates. Since I work on multiple computers I was often confused when I appeared to have the certificate but Xcode wouldn't accept it. I (wrongly) believed that Apple's iCloud would sync my keychain. Turns out I just needed to right click the cert on the computer that had the private/public key pair and export it as a .p12 to computers that didn't have it.

If you have any problems feel free to ask on here, a lot of us still have traumatic PTSD and flashbacks from dealing with Apple's provisioning system but we can still help.