Can iPhone Application Archives be exported and imported on another Computer?

Question

I have an iPhone application that is not yet released but I wanted to make sure that when I create an Archive that I can symbolicate crash reports. For now that works on the Computer that created the archive / IPA.

But in order to be sure that I can symbolicate crash reports on another box or by another user I wanted to figure out how an Archive can be exported and be imported on another computer. As of now I can find the ".xcarchive" directory but when I put this on another computer and double click it then it says The archive could not be installed and "The archive may be corrupt or unreadable".

If I put the file manually at the right place it will be listed in XCode's Organizer but my crash reports are not symbolicated.

Any ideas what I do wrong or is there a way to do something with the .dSYM file.

Answer 1

After archiving a build, click 'Share...' in the Organizer for that build. Then, click 'Save to Disk'. That .ipa (assuming it is made with the right provisioning profile/distribution profile) will be portable to any device (and crash reports will symbolicate as normal too).

If users send reports unsymbolicated (uh, is that a word), you can always follow these steps to get a readable crash report.

Answer 2

Alan was right but it did not help me right away. After trying to use "symbolicatecrash" I figured out that there was something wrong with XCode 3 and 4. This script was unable to do it's job because it was using the wrong otool and atos program.

So I went ahead and installed the entire development environment on a Mac that had no previous XCode installation. After some dealing with some Certificate issues I was finally able to build, distribute and symbolicate a crash report.

After that I could ZIP up the archive (right click on the Archive and use "Show in Finder" to find its location) and then copy that in the Archive directory of another computer and voila this crash report was symbolicated there as well.