Installing different versions of the same iPhone project?

Question

While I'm prototyping games, I frequently need to go back to compare with older versions, to better get a feel of if I'm on the right track or not. But it's a lenghty process to have to check out the old version and re-export everytime I need to check a specific version. It'd be so much smoother if I could simply launch different versions.

How can I have multiple versions of the same project installed on the device?

Answer 1

If you give the programs different bundle identifiers, they can be installed on the same device. Possibly add a new build target that appends a random number (or build revision, or svn revision, etc) onto the end of the bundle identifier (and possibly the application name), then you can have multiple versions installed at once.

For example, you might have the application "com.mycompany.mygame" with the title "MyGame", and your script would create versions such as "com.mycompany.mygame43" with the title "MyGame43".

However, this may be defeated by Apple's love of making everything difficult for developers, also known as code signing. I personally don't do much App Store development, but I know the provisioning profiles can be a huge pain and they may have issues with this approach. Who knows.

Edit: guess it does work with code signing, but not in-app purchases.