How to create an IPA file for my iOS application with Xamarin for Visual Studio 2013

Question

How to create an IPA file from visual studio 2013 for my Xamarin iOS app? I am using Xamarin Forms 1.3.4.

I did this before for my hello world application in forms 1.3.0 and published it in testflightapp, but now that I have upgraded my Xamarin for Visual Studio to the latest version today, I seem to have a problem.

I can run my application on a simulator and / or physical device, and everything works. But when I try to "show the IPA file on the build server", I get this error.

"Error 4 Failed to display the IPA file in Finder on the Xamarin.iOS Extension 0 0 build server"

I chose the "Ad Hoc" build configuration, which builds great. I get an IPA file with a zero byte in my local folder \ bin \ iPhone \ Ad-Hoc \.

I don’t remember if I have to publish, deploy or just create in order to create an IPA file.

When I build, it builds clean. When I deploy, it says “deploy myapp” in the Xamarin log. When I try to post, I get this error:

Error 5 Invalid value for 'TargetFrameworkVersion'.

I was only able to recover from this by following the suggestions for this discussion.

http://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/10472/error-invalid-value-for-targetframeworkversion

i.e. generate manifests to false.

-Randy

Answer 1

Just create an AdHoc or AppStore version and create an IPA.

Then go to the bin folder of the project and there it will be :)

Answer 2

Found him a few hours later

In visual studio 2015, configure the debugging solution and solution platform on the iPhone. In the solution configuration, I did not find any Ad-hoc option.

Goto 'your_ios_project.iOS' → ios Bundle sign, change identifier from 'developer (automatically)' to 'iPhone Developer: xx..x (xx ..)'

Create an iOS project. After the build completes successfully, an IPA file will be created in both your bin folder and the MAC.

Answer 3

I also struggled with creating an IPA file for my iOS application and what I found in Visual Studio for Mac, but also tested in VS2017 to win, just right-click on the project (or select Build → Archive for Publishing), and there you have the opportunity to create an archive, which can be later signed and published (select ad-hoc to create a package on your local disk).