iOS Ad Hoc generates small .ipa file size

Question

In order to distribute your app via Ad Hoc distribution, you have to create a provisioning profile for ad hoc distribution, download the provisioning profile file, verify that is valid in Xcode, sign the application with the provisioning profile (should be the same bundle id), edit the scheme to duplicate the release configuration and rename it to ad hoc, also change it so the archive command takes the ad hoc configuration, hit the command "Archive", follow the organizer screens until you distribute it for ad hoc, save the ipa file and you're done.

Everything works as expected, I've successfully deployed for ad hoc distribution before many times, the problem is that the final .ipa file is way smaller than the whole application folder, from 17MB it ends up as a 3.3 MB file, in addition itunes won't install this application.

Have you any clues on what's happening?

Answer 1

The application folder often contains a number of different builds (for Simulator and actual devices) and sometimes repository data, so you should not have to worry about the size difference. The folder of one of my iOS projects has a size of 25MB, while the IPA only has 6 MB.

Moreover, PNGs are optimized for iOS while compiling, so if the original PNGs were not much bigger before, an image size of 4KB does not necessarily mean something is wrong.

I'd suggest you to concentrate on the real problem, which must be related to your provisioning profile. Have you made sure that your provisioning profile includes the device you want to install your app on?