Building slint-viewer for iOS

Producing an iOS build of slint-viewer for TestFlight happens in two stages: CI builds an unsigned archive, and you sign, export and upload it locally. Keeping the signing local means no Apple distribution credentials need to live in the CI secrets.

Building the archive in CI

The slint_tool_binary.yaml workflow has an opt-in ios input (default false). Enable it to build the build_ios job, which produces an unsigned .xcarchive and uploads it as a workflow artifact named slint-viewer-ios-<version>-<short-sha>.

Trigger it from the Actions tab ("Build slint-viewer or -lsp binary" → "Run workflow") with ios checked, or:

bash

gh workflow run slint_tool_binary.yaml -f program=viewer -f ios=true

The archive carries the workspace version as its marketing version and the commit count as its build number. App Store Connect requires the build number to grow with every upload, so always archive from a newer commit than the last upload.

The app icon is rendered from logo/slint-logo-square-light-whitebg.svg into the asset catalog at build time by scripts/render_ios_app_icon.bash using rsvg-convert, so it is not checked in.

Signing, exporting and uploading locally

Prerequisites

An Apple Developer account that is a member of the team owning the dev.slint.slint-viewer App ID, with a matching App Store Connect app record.
An Apple Distribution signing certificate and an App Store provisioning profile for dev.slint.slint-viewer installed in your keychain.
An App Store Connect API key (.p8 plus its Key ID and Issuer ID) for uploading.

Sign and upload

Download and unzip the CI artifact, then create an ExportOptions.plist. The upload destination makes xcodebuild upload to App Store Connect directly, so no separate upload tool is needed:

xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>method</key>
    <string>app-store-connect</string>
    <key>destination</key>
    <string>upload</string>
    <key>teamID</key>
    <string>YOUR_TEAM_ID</string>
</dict>
</plist>

(Older Xcode versions use app-store instead of app-store-connect for the method.)

A single xcodebuild -exportArchive then signs the archive with your distribution certificate and provisioning profile and uploads it using an App Store Connect API key (.p8):

bash

xcodebuild -exportArchive \
    -archivePath slint-viewer.xcarchive \
    -exportPath export \
    -exportOptionsPlist ExportOptions.plist \
    -authenticationKeyPath ~/private_keys/AuthKey_<KEY_ID>.p8 \
    -authenticationKeyID <KEY_ID> \
    -authenticationKeyIssuerID <ISSUER_ID>

After processing, the build appears under TestFlight in App Store Connect.

To upload through a GUI instead, set destination to export so the signed export/slint-viewer.ipa is written to disk, then drag it into the Transporter app.