I find this incident EXTREMELY fascinating and want to share it as a case study…
Tag: Coding
I code in PHP, Objective-C, and hopefully some ruby/ruby on rails soon enough.
So my first iPhone post was pretty detailed, but don’t let that deceive you, I’m not actually experienced developing for iPhone. In fact, I’m not even really experienced developing on Mac using Objective-C either. In fact, that’s sort of the point of this blog, or at least the iPhone category. I’m not a hardened Obj-C developer who’s looking to write tutorials that I think less experienced developers will like. Rather, I’m a beginner in this field who’s looking to guide other beginners by writing my solutions to the problems I’ve encountered. The first problem I encountered was that I couldn’t debug my apps on-device without paying $100 for a code-signing identity that I may never actually take advantage of. As a result, the first post on this blog is how to get around that stumbling block. Moreover, I’ve also found that you are bound to experience the same problem at least a few times, and I’ve also found that, in a field as fast-moving as iPhone development, retracing your steps is a serious problem. This blog is meant to be a guide for me as well as anyone else.
Vital iPhone stats for this post:
iPhone OS version: 2.2 UPDATE 7/11/09: OS 3.0 procedure here
Jailbreak status: Jailbroken using Pwnage Tool 2.2, old baseband preserved (see post here, coral cache)
The Goal: Get live on-device XCode debugging without being a paying ADC member.
Abstract: The iPhone uses code-signing to restrict what gets run on the device. Under normal conditions, this means that John-developer signs up with ADC (Apple Developer Connection) and gets, among other credentials, a code signing identity. He downloads a certificate, plugs all the info into XCode, and when he compiles his project for debugging or release, it gets signed with this certificate. When it gets transferred to an iPhone (say, for debugging) or released to the App Store, this signature gets checked to ensure that the code came from a registered, trusted ADC member.
What WE want to do is run our own code, developed in XCode, on our iPhone without this valid certificate from Apple. Part of this process allows code from OTHER non-ADC-signed developers to run on other phones, but that’s not the real point. The goal of THIS tutorial is to make the Build and Go live-on-device debugging work on a jailbroken iPhone without the proper signature, in other words without the need to pay. Note: this does not allow you to develop for the App Store. This is only good if you’re only developing for yourself or you plan to distribute only for jailbroken phones/iTouches.