Is it safe to share the iOS Enterprise Distribution Certificate with external developers?

Question

I am in the following situation: We have an enterprise developer account and for an app we are working with an external developer.

At the moment we do not have access to

Answer 1

You can have your external developer to sign with whatever he wants and then you can re-sign the IPA and use it. This way the source code is "safe" in the developer's perspective and you can use your IPA signed with your certificate. I normally use this, but you can do it in the command line too...

As for your Post Scriptum part, that's not true... I have the experience of working with external agencies where they use their own certificate and provisioning and when I receive their IPA I only need to re-signed it.

Answer 2

They can be responsible for creating their own profile, and you can simply send them your p12 key (no big deal). You can also just give them the distribution certificate.

To be honest, I've never been in a situation where an employer or contractor was hesitant to give me their certificate & p12 file. So I've never thought much of it!