Chapter 12
Publishing and Maintaining the App

Look how far we’ve come! We started from nothing, learned our way around in playgrounds, and then started on our podcast app. By learning new things and adding new features, we’ve been able to build a genuinely useful app. So far, though, we’re the only ones who’ve seen it.

In this chapter, we’re going to get our app out of the Xcode build-and-run cycle and into the world where people can actually see and use it. We’ll start by packaging the app for submission to the App Store and letting testers try it out before we release it to the world. We’ll finish up by talking about what’s next, both for our app and for our journey through iOS development.

One note before we get going: the material in this chapter is mostly about working with Apple’s developer websites. Because that’s something that we can’t reproduce in a downloadable code example, and because Apple can change it at any time, we’re taking a slightly different approach. We’ll walk through the steps of submitting apps for testing or publishing in general terms, but we won’t expect you to necessarily run through the process of actually publishing your copy of PragmaticPodcasts to the public.