MonoTouch Enterprise - Deployment

Question

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?

Answer 1

An .ipa file is basically a glorified .zip file. There are a couple of routes you can go down:

1. 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.
2. 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" !).