iPhone App:Test the newer version of app first and after make it available for other users for download

Question

I have an iPhone App which is available on App Store.

Now I have made some changes in my existing App which can be tested only when an App is available on App Store

Answer 1

Two choices:

OTA AdHoc Distribution

Set up over-the-air Ad Hoc distribution. These guys can help: https://testflightapp.com/

A user can install an adhoc build over an appstore build without deleting data, and vice-versa.

Side-by-side Builds

Ok, so your question is about side-by-side installation: you want a user to have the real app and a test version on the phone at the same time. To do that you just need to create version of the app with a different bundle Id. So if your app is com.myco.MyApp, create a copy of it as com.myco.testing.MyApp. Then use Ad Hoc distribution (or whatever) to get it to testers.

I've got a build script that updates the bundle version with the build number. I'm actually just about to update the script so that it will modify the bundle Id so I can have side-by-side testing. This is what I do for the bundle version on my build server:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion '${PROJECTBUNDLEVERSION}'" $PROJECT/Info.plist

Presumably can do something similar for the CFBundleID:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleIdentifier '${PROJECTTESTBUNDLEID}'" $PROJECT/Info.plist