CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xcodeipaapplication-loader
Leon Lucardie
Leon Lucardie

Reputation: 9740

Apple Application Loader altool issue when using api key

I am currently trying to use ALTool to upload my application IPA to App Store Connect as part of a build script. These are the commands I am using:

xcrun altool --validate-app -f my-ipa-file.ipa -t ios --apiKey "MYAPIKEY" --apiIssuer "MYISSUERID"
xcrun altool --upload-app -f my-ipa-file.ipa -t ios --apiKey "MYAPIKEY" --apiIssuer "MYISSUERID"

My private key (p8) is located at

./private_keys/AuthKey_MYAPIKEY.p8

According to the altool --help command the tool will look in the following directories (in order) for a p8 file named AuthKey_<apikey>.p8:

 ./private_keys
 ~/private_keys
 ~/.private_keys
 ~/.appstoreconnect/private_keys

Considering the p8 file is in the first folder of that list, this should work. And for the --validate-app call, it does actually work. The calls to App Store Connect are made, the app validates and if there are any errors from App Store Connect they return as expected.

However, for some reason the --upload-app command always returns with the same error:

2020-09-01 14:24:40.934 altool[28265:119010] * Error: Error uploading 'my-ipa-file.ipa'.
2020-09-01 14:24:40.934 altool[28265:119010] * Error: code -18000 (Could not locate the private key file: AuthKey_MYAPIKEY.p8)

For some reason it seems --upload-app doesn't properly load the p8 file in ./private_keys/ while --validate-app does.

Placing the p8 file in one of the other 3 folders (~/private_keys etc.) does work for both validate and upload as a temporary workaround. But I prefer to use ./private_keys due to how my build scripts injects files into the build process.

Is this a bug in altool or is there something I'm missing?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 4567

Answers (2)

Blind Despair
Blind Despair

Reputation: 3295

In GitHub actions I just put the api key into $RUNNER_TEMP. And then when running the xcrun altool I am doing it like so:

API_PRIVATE_KEYS_DIR=$RUNNER_TEMP xcrun altool

Upvotes: 5

Svyatoslav Scherbina
Svyatoslav Scherbina

Reputation: 285

This is probably a bug.

When uploading an app, altool seems to invoke iTMSTransporter under the hood to do the actual uploading. The latter changes current directory before running, so when it looks for ./private_keys/AuthKey_MYAPIKEY.p8 in current directory, it checks the wrong location.

See cd in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/ContentDeliveryServices.framework/itms/bin/iTMSTransporter.

I guess altool doesn't invoke iTMSTransporter when validating apps.

Upvotes: 2

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