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TestFlight Distribution Pipeline

TestFlight Distribution Pipeline

CAS-1866 | Delivered 2026-05-09 | Epic

What this is

A working TestFlight pipeline that lets the regent ship iOS builds from the command line in under 30 minutes — one command, no manual Xcode steps.

Why it matters

Cross-device sync (CAS-1093) and the Cloud Bridge (CAS-2102) are built; the missing piece was a repeatable path to get builds onto real devices and to external beta testers. This epic closed that gap.

What was delivered

deno task release:testflight — single-command build and upload

scripts/release-testflight.sh does the full sequence:

  1. Auto-bumps CFBundleVersion (monotonically numeric, enforced)
  2. Compiles Rust + iOS via tauri ios build --release
  3. Archives with xcodebuild archive
  4. Exports the .ipa via xcodebuild -exportArchive + ExportOptions.plist (method: app-store)
  5. Uploads to App Store Connect via xcrun altool with the API key at ~/.paperclip/secrets/casaconomy-asc-api-key.p8

Credentials (Key ID 68J57ZMWKP, Issuer ID 69a6de76-…, Team 2KTMKQ23LD) are wired into the script; no env setup needed.

iOS sandbox path fixes (CAS-2085)

casaconomy_data_root() in src-tauri/src/shared.rs now uses the iOS app-group container path instead of falling back to the home directory, which is outside the iOS sandbox and caused immediate launch crashes on real devices.

iOS launch crash hardening (CAS-2005, CAS-2006)

Several robustness fixes that prevented the first TestFlight build from running:

  • Sandbox root writes blocked during DB init
  • casaconomy/ path double-nesting eliminated
  • Frontend web bundle now included in the IPA (was missing, causing a blank screen)
  • get_window panics converted to graceful no-ops on mobile
  • Deep-link init crash path hardened

iOS development runbook + skill (CAS-2086)

.agents/skills/casaconomy-ios-development/ — documents the iOS-specific gotchas (Xcode silent logout, cargo-mobile2 SDK-path matching, WKWebView IPC quirks, Maestro simulator limitations) so future engineers don’t re-discover them from scratch.

Operational runbook

docs/release/testflight.md — step-by-step for shipping a new build, including the altool upload semantics and the Manual vs Automatic distribution group gotcha.

Known gaps at delivery

  • Manual distribution mode required for altool-uploaded builds (TestFlight Automatic mode only applies to Xcode-direct uploads). The tester group must be set to Manual and builds attached explicitly.
  • Privacy policy and App Store metadata (Stream B) deferred — not blocking TestFlight internal access, required before public launch.
  • CI upload step not wired — the pipeline is a local-machine script; no GitHub Actions integration yet.