I created a distribution profile (many, many, many times now) but no matter what I do, when I go to Accounts under Xcode it lists it there, no problem, but when I go to VS for Mac or even VS Code the distribution profile simply doesn't seem to exist.
In VSCode it just doesn't;t appear as an option but in VS For Mac it at least tells me that "No valid profile was found" and it instructs me to make sure everything is setup properly. Normally when this happens I delete every single last key and certificate from KeyChain and on the Apple dev portal and I start from scratch making sure to add all my devices, creating a new certificate using a new CSR, selecting Apple Distribution and... nope, Xcode sees it just fine, bat I can't build any MAUI apps because "No valid profile was found"
Once in a while, doing the same thing for the n-th time actually works and lo-and-behold there is the profile! Hallelujah! Then I install the latest version of MacOS or Xcode or Visual Studio and poof goes my profile.
So I create it again and no luck. So I delete it and this time say "iOS publishing only, please" and lo and behold the profile appears... then I go to sleep / drink a coffee / reboot / think of pizza and lo-and-behold my profile is gone again.
I restart the entire process deleting everything and after n attempts it finally shows ... until it doesn't, any more.
When it comes to development, I click a button and the app is on my phone. When it comes to TestFlight it takes me weeks to get a profile visible so I can send it to Apple.
Now as an added bonus the "Archive for distribution" option vanished from VS For Mac also. Fun. This prompted me to try and use VS Code, which is when I found that I have the same problem there as I do in VS For Mac.
So the TL;DR version is that VS For Mac has a simple GUI interface while VS Code requires a simple keyboard shortcut before clicking the mouse a few times, both apps make life super simple... but neither can do the job of generating a distribution build because neither can see the distribution certificate. The only thing that can see it is Xcode
What am I doing wrong? Why does it take weeks of doing the same thing over and over, praying for different results, only to be blessed with a success every n-th time lasting for n2 days before the loop restarts?