CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneiosipa
roastjj
roastjj

Reputation: 391

How to install an ipa/app file into iPhone with command line?

I want to know how to install an ipa/app file into iPhone just using the command line?

The device maybe without jailbreak or jailbroken already.

I tried to use the command line: xcodebuild, but failed. I didn't find the parameter how to set the destination, maybe a real device, not a simulator.

What options do I have?

Upvotes: 39

Views: 61760

Answers (4)

fguchelaar
fguchelaar

Reputation: 4909

With the new Apple Configurator 2 application, you can Install Automation Tools... from the menu. This will add support for the command-line tool "cfgutil".

cfgutil allows you to install ipa's from the command-line using cfgutil install-app <AbsolutePathToIpa>. We use it on our build server to automatically update the device with the latest build.

Upvotes: 35

Sophy Swicz
Sophy Swicz

Reputation: 1357

I've just gathered in a single post (Gist) how to achieve this, using

1.- Mattt's library Shenzhen

2.- Phonegap's library ios-deploy

Read here:

How to generate and install an IPA file

Upvotes: 5

0x8BADF00D
0x8BADF00D

Reputation: 7708

I've tried libimobiledevice-macosx. works fine on iPhone 5. iOS version 6.1.4. I was able to install app and see log output like in xcode :) Thank you!

Upvotes: 1

user533676
user533676

Reputation: 595

Three ways I know of:

  • These guys wrote a tool in Ruby to do it. It uses the Fruitstrap library which in turn uses one of Apple's private APIs, so this could possibly break in the future.

  • You can also just use Fruitstrap on its own, but then you need an .app directory, whereas the Transporter Chief tool I linked above supports both .app and .ipa deployments (as required in your answer).

In either case, you need to have XCode installed for it to work, but the device does not need to be jailbroken.

  • Thirdly, there is also a binary distribution for OS X of the libimobiledevice library, which enables Linux boxes to talk to iOS devices. This has a few different tools, one of which can install valid signed IPAs to the device using this syntax:

    ideviceinstaller -i myapp.ipa

    The advantage of this method is that it does not need XCode or even iTunes.

Upvotes: 40

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