How to install an ipa/app file into iPhone with command line?

Question

I want to know how to install an ipa/app file into iPhone just using the command line?

The device maybe without jailbreak or jailbroken already.

I tried to use the command line: xcodebuild, but failed. I didn't find the parameter how to set the destination, maybe a real device, not a simulator.

What options do I have?

Answer 1

Three ways I know of:

• These guys wrote a tool in Ruby to do it. It uses the Fruitstrap library which in turn uses one of Apple's private APIs, so this could possibly break in the future.

• You can also just use Fruitstrap on its own, but then you need an .app directory, whereas the Transporter Chief tool I linked above supports both .app and .ipa deployments (as required in your answer).

In either case, you need to have XCode installed for it to work, but the device does not need to be jailbroken.

• Thirdly, there is also a binary distribution for OS X of the libimobiledevice library, which enables Linux boxes to talk to iOS devices. This has a few different tools, one of which can install valid signed IPAs to the device using this syntax:

  ideviceinstaller -i myapp.ipa 

  The advantage of this method is that it does not need XCode or even iTunes.

Answer 2

With the new Apple Configurator 2 application, you can Install Automation Tools... from the menu. This will add support for the command-line tool "cfgutil".

cfgutil allows you to install ipa's from the command-line using cfgutil install-app <AbsolutePathToIpa>. We use it on our build server to automatically update the device with the latest build.