在没有开发人员帐户的情况下在Visual Studio中创建IPA

Question

We need to release our Xamarin.Forms app for our customer as ipa-file, so he can release it in his company enterprise store. So my plan for deployment is this:

• Customer sends me Distribution Certificate etc.
• I create an IPA with these files and send the IPA back

Can i do this within Visual Studio without an apple developer account? Or do i need to handle it in xcode? (i didn't work with xcode yet).

Answer 1

In order for you to build iOS solutions in Xamarin, you need an Apple Developer Account as this is where your certificates and provisioning profiles are stored.

You can always import a certificate that has been provided by someone else.

Afterwards, you can build your IPA in Visual Studio. You just need to set up a Build Host and use an Ad-Hoc Distribution in your case.

It may seem a bit tedious to configure your certificates and signing identities if you havn't done so before, but we've all been there.