I am having some trouble using my distribution profile to package my app.
So the development profile works fine. I just set the correct bundle id in my Info.plist and in my Visual Studio for Mac project options, just set the iOS bundle signing to my name (the option appears as: Developer: Name (some sort of ID)) for the signing identity and "Name of Development Profile" as the provisioning profile- this correctly loads the app onto the phone as we would expect. However, when switching to Distribution (the only option for this seems to be "Distribution - Automatic"), no matching provisioning profiles are found. The same thing happens if I package the app and then try to sign/distribute it (no matching provisioning profiles found).
I have double clicked on the provisioning profile which opens XCode and also I have clicked Download profiles on my user account in XCode (based on documentation it looks like either of these should correctly load it), so according to Xamarin's docs I should be doing everything correctly, but VS doesn't seem to see the Distribution Profile at all. What is the issue here? Do I need a separate signing identity?
It turns out that yes, you do need a distribution signing identity to go along with your distribution provisioning profile. I obtained the distribution cert for my team's account and added it to my Keychain Access and Visual Studio for Mac was able to now use my distribution profile to package the app.