I was wondering if a share extension creates an .ipa file similarly to a regular target?
Thanks
No, it's packaged in your app's IPA and delivered to Apple as a single file with it (and everything else).
An IPA itself is a zip format file -- if you make a copy of one and rename it to .zip, you can unzip it and look at what it has.
At the top level it has a Payload
folder with a .app
file in it. That file is a package (you can right-click and show contents). In there, you'll find a PlugIns
folder, which will have *.appex
files. These are what your extension targets build.
So, the IPA's Payload/NAME.app/PlugIns/*.appex
packages are the extensions.