Today I was able to launch from the PC to iPhone 6 Plus. The build was successful and the ipa installed to the phone but the app needed to be manually started.
I iterated over several changes and launches and came to realize that while subsequent builds were successful, the ipa on the device was not getting updated with my changes. Several attempts to launch after deleting the app off the phone resulted in the Deployment Server crashing again. I restarted the phone and UE4, failed to get a launch done, and finally made a iOS package and installed the correct ipa via iTunes.
Trying to launch again after a minor BP change has failed. But I just noticed something odd. I currently have the iPhone 6 Plus cabled to the PC and have for this entire session. The iPad is on wifi and I’m not currently testing with it but have been picking it up to kill time during builds. But the iPad seems to be a target:
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: [DD] Trying to connect to mobile device running iOS ...
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: Connect: Couldn't Start AFC service
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: [DD] Mobile Device ' Six Plus' connected
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: Device 'iPad Air' with id 1782b1522f7b2axxxx6ac77 is being checked against .
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: [DD] Transferring IPA to device 'iPad Air' ...
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: Directory (PublicStaging) doesn't exist!
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: CreateDirectory (PublicStaging) failed
LogPlayLevel: DeploymentServer: Connect: Couldn't Start AFC service
If I unplug the iPhone then the launcher does not attempt to use it as a launch target over wifi. However the launcher will always attempt to use the iPad if wifi is enabled - and this is when the DeploymentServer crashes and the PublicStaging directory can not be created. Plug the iPad in to the PC and the crash seems to disappear. The obsolete ipa gets installed to the connected iPad on the second launch attempt (the first attempt results in an ipa that will not start).
Trying to solve the obsolete ipa problem, I’ve deleted the file from iTunes and the devices. When I try another launch the ipa in the binary directory has been touched with the current time but is still obsolete and gets installed to the device yet again. The obsolete ipa has green debug text printing on the screen and my updated version (as will play in PIE) has red text.
So maybe one of these problems occur when an UE4 installation has launched to multiple iOS devices in the past and DeploymentServer is inappropriately or incompletely attaching to non-cabled devices?