Fastlane : What does the fastlane match do ?

The purpose of ‘fastlane match’ is to store all of your code signing keys and provisioning profiles in a GitHub repository, and downloads and installs the necessary keys and profiles with a single command.

When we run the ‘Fastlane match development’ command on terminal, the following things happen in the background —

1. First it starts cloning the certificate repository by calling git clone and store code in a temporary folder and ask you for the password to decrypt it unless the MATCH_PASSWORD environment variable was specified.
2. Check with the Developer Portal whether certificates are still valid. If the certificates do not exist, fastlane will create and add a developer certificate to the repo.
3. Install certificates from the repo.
4. Check whether the provisioning profile exists. If not, Fastlane will create a new developer profile.
5. Install the provisioning profile and set the environment variable that stores its id.