iPhone applications are shipped as application bundles. These are directories with the extension .app that contain your code, data, configuration files and a manifest that the iPhone uses to learn about your application.
The process of turning a .NET executable into an application is mostly driven by the mtouch command, a tool that integrates many of the steps required to turn the application into a bundle. This tool is also used to launch your application in the simulator and to deploy the software to an actual iPhone or iPod Touch device.
Building
The mtouch command can compile your code in three different ways:
- Compile for simulator testing.
- Compile for device deployment.
- Deploy your executable to the device.
- Compile to source code, for integration with X-Code.
Building for the Simulator
When you get started, the most common used scenario will be for you to try out the application in the Simulator, so you will be using the mtouch -sim to compile the code into a simulator package. This is done like this:
$ mtouch -sim Hello.app hello.exe
Building for the Device
To build software for the device you will build your application using the mtouch -dev option, additionally you need to provide the name of the certificate used to sign your application. The following shows how the application is built for the device:
$ mtouch -dev -c "iPhone Developer: Miguel de Icaza" foo.exe
In this particular case, we are using the "iPhone Developer: Miguel de Icaza" certificate to sign the application. This step is very important, or the physical device will refuse to load the application.
Running your Application
Launching on the Simulator
Launching on the simulator is very simple once you have an application bundle:
$ mtouch -launchsim Hello.app
You will see some output like this:
Launching application
Application launched
PID: 98460
Press enter to terminate the application
It is strongly recommended that you also keep a log of the standard output and standard error files to assist in your debugging. The output of Console.WriteLine goes to stdout, and the output from Console.Error.WriteLine and any other runtime error messages goes to stderr.
To do this, use the --stdout and --stderr flags:
../../tools/mtouch/mtouch --launchsim=Hello.app --stdout=output --stderr=error
If your application fails, you can see the fiels output and error to diagnose the problem.
Deploying to a Device
To deploy to your device you need to provision your device as described in Apple's Managing Devices document. Once your device has been properly provisioned, you can use the mtouch command to deploy a compiled ".app" into your device. You do this using this command:
$ mtouch -installdev=MyApp.app
These steps are typically performed by MonoDevelop.
Reference
See the mtouch(1) manual page for details on the other command line options.
