Can an Xcode .mobileprovision file be 'installed' from the command line?

Since asking this question, I've built a solution myself. The secret is to simply copy the file to the ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ folder, but (here's the tricky bit) renamed to [The UUID].mobileprovision.

The UUID is held inside a text part of the file itself (in a plist). Unfortunately, the file also includes binary so 'defaults read' cannot read it. Luckily this guy has built a small command line utility to get the UUID (and some other things out again).

Here's my full working script:

https://gist.github.com/2568707

A compendium of all other answers update_provisioning_profile.sh:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Download and install a single iOS provisioning profile
# Requires https://github.com/nomad/cupertino
#
# Usage
# - Login to your account once:
# ios login
# - Configure TEAM and PROFILE (instructions below)
# - Run update_provisioning_profile.sh at anytime, usually after adding/removing devices to the profile

# Configure the team identifier
# Copy it from developer portal or just use cupertino to get it:
# ios devices
# Copy the string in parens and set it as TEAM
TEAM="team id"

# Configure the profile name you want to manage
# Copy it from developer portal or use cupertino to get a list (ignoring Xcode managed profiles):
# ios profiles --team ${TEAM} | grep -v 'iOS Team Provisioning Profile'
# Copy the name as-is and set as PROFILE
PROFILE="profile name"

# Fetch the profile using `cupertino` tool
# you need to run `ios login` once to setup the account
ios profiles:download "${PROFILE}" --team ${TEAM}
PROFILE_FILE=`echo $PROFILE | tr ' ' '_'` # `cupertino` tool will replace spaces with _
UUID=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :UUID' /dev/stdin <<< $(security cms -D -i ${PROFILE_FILE}.mobileprovision)`

# copy where Xcode can find it
cp ${PROFILE_FILE}.mobileprovision "$HOME/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/${UUID}.mobileprovision"

# clean
rm ${PROFILE_FILE}.mobileprovision

Easy to adapt to your provisioning needs.

If you don't want to download external dependencies (like Ben did), the following should work in most cases:

uuid=`grep UUID -A1 -a adhoc.mobileprovision | grep -io "[-A-F0-9]\{36\}"`
cp adhoc.mobileprovision ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning\ Profiles/$uuid.mobileprovision

Note that a UUID is composed of hexadecimal digits so the correct range is [-A-F0-9] and not [-A-Z0-9].

Bonus: Download and install profiles

Using the cupertino tool, the following snippet downloads all your distribution profiles from the Developer Portal and installs them.

ios profiles:download:all --type distribution

for file in *.*provision*; do
    uuid=`grep UUID -A1 -a "$file" | grep -io "[-A-F0-9]\{36\}"`
    extension="${file##*.}"
    echo "$file -> $uuid"
    mv -f "$file" ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning\ Profiles/"$uuid.$extension"
done

cupertino (the ios command) can be installed with sudo gem install cupertino.