Sign iOS app on Windows (DEF-2810)

Feature requests
#1

Many people ask me: “Is it possible to make ios app on Defold without Mac?”, and unfortunately I have to say them : “No”.

To be honest I don’t know why…

I did it on Adobe AIR many years ago.
I Just downloaded certificate and provisioning from the Apple site and go!

Adobe AIR SDK can sign and pack an ipa on Windows using this two files.
Of cource somebody from community can download AIR SDK, decompile adt.jar and look how to do this trick, and then make own tool, but would be greate to have official support of this feature in Defold.

And Adobe not alone, Unreal Engine has this feature too:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/UnrealiPhonePackager.html

ipp_resigntool_tab.png563×573 37.1 KB

This feature can help grow up the Defold community. I am sure because I hear this question from all who ask me about Defold (many times, every week)

I am Mac user and I am happy with it, but I think it would be great Defold feature.

7 Likes
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#2

+1 for this!

#3

Not sure if it’s still relevant, but here
http://www.itoolchain.com/

#4

+1 really need this feature.

1 Like
#5

Agreed, desired feature.

#6

Added ticket DEF-2810

1 Like
#7

let me know please if you have a progress in this. really want to make iOS app without buying Mac. it’s strange but I hate mac :smiley: but I love iOS.

4 Likes
#8

No progress at the moment I’m afraid. We will be looking at the build pipeline next year and this feature request might get looked at then. No promises though!

4 Likes
#9

Hello, any movement ahead? Any?

3 Likes
#10

I am waiting for this feature as well. Would be great to hear any updates or even thoughts from defold team about estimated priority of the task

#11

There is currently no priority give to this feature. We would first need to do an investigation and figure out how to bundle an iOS app on Windows without access to Apple tools. We would also need to figure out if there are any legal implications of offering this on non-Apple platforms.

Do you have any link to a resource describing how it is done? Which other engines offer this functionality?

No bundle for iOS?
#12

The linked https://www.itoolchain.com/ is five years old. I doubt it still works. It’s also a set of closed source tools meaning that we can’t integrate them. Also this makes me shy away: “Compiler and Linker - It’s a heavily patched version of Apple’s opensourced compiler and linker”

The UnrealEngine iPhone Packager tool also linked above seems to rely on a remote Mac:
“packageapp - Collects and transfers files to package to a remote Mac and generates an application directory”

3 Likes
#13

What if … King engineers create new service like current extension builder? Remote web interface for dedicated macos machine which remotedly build user macos projects and generate macos profiles? I think this is more easy task than black magic on windows with macos toolchain. Thx.

#14

Well, yes, maybe, but that would be a big undertaking on level with our native extension system. You’d also have to upload and install signing identities to that system and I’m sure there are a lot of legal implications when handing over sensitive information like that. Not sure if this is something that has been discussed at some point, @Mathias_Westerdahl?

The service would be a lot like Unity Cloud Builds (a paid service btw) so it is definitely something that is possible to create, but I wonder if it’s really worth spending time implementing, especially considering the other high priority things we have in out roadmap.

There are services that offer cloud hosted OSX machines, for instance https://www.macincloud.com/

2 Likes
No bundle for iOS?
#15

I think each user already has project at dashboard so all sensitive info stay private and get from project structure for build. Maybe https://www.macincloud.com/ is a solution!

Thank you for answers!

#16

Well, we’ve discussed it before, very briefly.
Personally, I’d try to make sure the signing tool works on windows first, that should be lot less work to do, and maintain. We haven’t prioritised it though, and there still the potential legal issue we nee to look into.

I think each user already has project at dashboard

Well, that’s not really true for projects that wish to use their own git clients., and I believe their numbers are growing.

6 Likes
#17

Just come across this…
It is not open source but source code is available via subscription.
https://www.pmbaty.com/iosbuildenv/
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/ios-project-builder-for-windows-15522

1 Like
#18

It’s actually possible to build and sign iOS apps on other platforms. The .ipa is just a zip with a .app with a code signed binary, resources and a bundle code signature

The app can be signed with this open source tool (Apache license):

5 Likes