What is the exact build process of an ios app in XCode?

Question

I am making an iOS app and I wanted to know what the build process is exactly. I don't mean want something like, it compiles, then it links and then its done. I want to know exactly what each step does like android has build steps viz. resource manager, pre-compiler, java builder, package builder, How are these steps taken care of in IOS. Secondly, what is the importance of .app file which is created with xcodebuild command to eventually create .ipa file.

Answer 1

Here are some links that might help:

Joshua Davies walks through building a simple Hello World app outside of Xcode: http://commandlinefanatic.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.cgi?article=art024

A .ipa file is just a zip archive with a predefined structure. The iPhone wiki describes it well: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/IPA_File_Format