spurious push notification registration causes Apple App Store deployment warning

[halmueller]

Uploading a new iOS build generates this warning email from App Store Connect:

Dear Developer,We identified one or more issues with a recent delivery for your app, "iSeaTree" 2.2.2 (57). Your delivery was successful, but you may wish to correct the following issues in your next delivery:ITMS-90078: Missing Push Notification Entitlement - Your app appears to register with the Apple Push Notification service, but the app signature's entitlements do not include the 'aps-environment' entitlement. If your app uses the Apple Push Notification service, make sure your App ID is enabled for Push Notification in the Provisioning Portal...

We aren't using push notifications. But something in the app is registering for them, and the Apple automatic validator is (correctly) flagging it as nonsensical behavior. You can't use push notifications if you haven't requested the entitlement.

The fix is to remove the registration, not to claim a pointless entitlement. From preliminary research, it might be coming from Firebase, or some other Cocoapod.

Relevant discussion threads:

• https://github.com/expo/turtle/issues/62#issuecomment-445378050
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37428539/firebase-causes-issue-missing-push-notification-entitlement-after-delivery-to/43974297#43974297
• https://github.com/expo/expo-cli/issues/830
• https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/15011
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32251123/missing-push-notification-entitlement

[paulschreiber]

How did you end up solving this?

[halmueller]

The last time I looked at the project, it was still unsolved. It’s a mildly scary warning for whoever uploads the build, but nothing more than that. It might at some point in the future become an actual blocking error, though. A careful audit of the JS framework files and defaults would probably catch it.