How to Make Packages for Cydia on an iPhone

If you're an iPhone developer who's been frustrated with the App Store's policies or had your app rejected, you may be well familiar with the iPhone jailbreaking community. Groups of hackers in the community have developed third-party applications that operate on a software substrate layer over the factory operating system. To deploy a software package to the hacked software substrate, the software developer needs to create a package that's distributed via Cydia found on a jailbroken iPhone. Cydia can be viewed as the equivalent of the Apple App Store within the jailbreaking community.

Things You'll Need

• Text-editing program

Instructions

1. Create a new folder on the desktop of your operating system, and give it a name that's relevant to the application you're packaging.

2. Create three additional folders within this new folder. Name one "DEBIAN," name one "Library," and a third one "Applications". Each directory is important because it stores application files generated during use to the iPhone's file system after the user downloads, extracts and installs the application package from Cydia.

3. Navigate to the "DEBIAN" folder.

4. Launch a text-editing program such as Microsoft Notepad or Mac OS X Text Edit to create a new, blank text document that you will later save in the "DEBIAN" folder.

5. Paste the following fields into the new text document, ensuring that they do not deviate from this order:

   Package: "Package identifying name"

   Name: "Application name"

   Version: "Application Version"

   Architecture: iphoneos-arm

   Depends: "List of any dependent packages, if applicable"

   Description: "Application description"

   Homepage: "'More Information' on the Details page

   Depiction: "IF YOU WANT TO PUT A DEPICTION, THEN REFER ELSEWHERE"

   Maintainer: "Person to contact-Format='Name <email address>'"

   Author: "Author of software, format same as Maintainer"

   Sponsor: "Funded project-Format='Name <website>'"

   Section: "Section in Cydia"

6. Fill out the respective fields for each of the lines in the above step. Between each quotation mark is a description of what you should fill in with the information respective to your application.

7. Do not modify the Architecture and Depicture fields. Leave the information for these fields the same as found in this article.

8. Save the text file with a simple, relevant file name to the "DEBIAN" folder, then exit your text editor program.

9. Upload your Cydia package text file along with the associated application files from your iOS Cocoa Touch development program to a Cydia repository so that users can download your software package from Cydia and use your application.

References

• ModMyI: How to Make a Cydia Package