Using Bitrise CI for Android apps

CI, short for Continuous Integration, is a good practice to move fast and confidently where code is integrated into shared repository many times a day. The ability to have pull requests get built, tested and release builds get distributed to testers allows team to verify automated build and identify problems quickly. I ‘ve been using for both iOS and Android apps and were very happy with it. The experience from creating new apps and deploying build is awesome. It works so well that , which then lead to the fact that Android apps are no longer supported and new customers can’t register. BuddyBuild Apple acquired it We are one of are looking for new alternatives. We’ve been using TravisCI, CircleCI and Jenkins to deploy to Fabric. There is also that is promising. But after a quick survey with friends and people, is the most recommended. So maybe I should try that. those who TeamCity Bitrise The thing I like about Bitrise is its wide range support of workflow. They are just scripts that execute certain actions, and most of them are . There’s also config file, but all things can be done using web interface, so I don’t need to look into pages of documentation just to get the configuration right. open source yml This post is not a promote for Bitrise, it is just about trying and adapting to new things. There is no eternal thing in tech, things come ad go fast. Below are some of the lessons I learn after using Bitrise, hope you find them useful. Variant to build There is no Android Build step in the default ‘primary’ workflow, as primary is generally used for testing the code for every push. There is an Android Build step in the deploy workflow and the app gets built by running this workflow. However, I like to have the Android Build step in my primary workflow, so I added it there. Usually I want module and stagingRelease build variant as we need to deploy staging builds to internal testers. app If you go to tab you can see that the configuration file has been updated. This is very handy. I’ve used some other CI services and I needed to lookup their documentation on how to make this work. Bitrise.yml yml Bump version code automatically I’ve used some other CI services before and the app version code surely does not start from 0. So it makes sense that Bitrise can auto bump version code from the current number. There are some predefined steps in Workflow but they don’t serve my need For the step, the source code is so I understand what it does. It works by modify file using . This article is not clear enough. Set Android Manifest Version code and name here AndroidManifest.xml sed Adjust your build number sed -i.bak “s/android:versionCode=”\”${VERSIONCODE}\””/android:versionCode=”\”${CONFIG_new_version_code}\””/” ${manifest_file} In our projects, the is from an environment variable in Jenkins, so we need look up the same thing in , and it is , which is a build number of the build on bitrise.io. versionCode BUILD_NUMBER Available Environment Variables BITRISE_BUILD_NUMBER This is how looks like in versionCode build.gradle versionCode (System. ("BITRISE_BUILD_NUMBER") as Integer ?: System. ("BUILD_NUMBER") as Integer ?: 243) getenv getenv 243 is the current version code of this project, so let’s go to app’s and change Settings Your next build number will be Deploy to Fabric I hope Bitrise has its own Crash reporting tool. For now I use Crashlytics in . And despite that Bitrise can distribute builds to testers, I still need to cross deploy to Fabric for historial reasons. Fabric There is only script to deploy IPA file for iOS apps, so we need something for Android. Fortunately I can use the Fabric plugin for gradle. steps-fabric-crashlytics-beta-deploy Add Fabric plugin Follow to add Fabric plugin. Basically you need to add these dependencies to your app ‘s Install Crashlytics via Gradle build.gradle buildscript {repositories {google()maven { url 'https://maven.fabric.io/public' }} dependencies { classpath 'io.fabric.tools:gradle:1.+' } } apply plugin: 'io.fabric' dependencies {compile('com.crashlytics.sdk.android:crashlytics:2.9.4@aar') {transitive = true;}} and API credentials in Manifest file Deploy command Modern Android Studio usually includes a execution file in the root of your project. Run for the list of tasks that you app can perform, look for that start with . Read more gradlew ./gradlew tasks Build tasks assemble Build your app from the command line You can execute all the build tasks available to your Android project using the command line tool. It’s available as a batch file for Windows ( ) and a shell script for Linux and Mac ( ), and it's accessible from the root of each project you create with Android Studio. Gradle wrapper gradlew.bat gradlew.sh For me, I want to deploy staging release build variant, so I run. Check that the build is on Fabric. ./gradlew assembleStagingRelease crashlyticsUploadDistributionStagingRelease Manage tester group Go to your app on Fabric.io and create group of testers. Note that alias that is generated for the group Go to your app’s and add to your desired or . For me I add to stag ng under build.gradle ext.betaDistributionGroupAliases=’my-internal-testers' productFlavors buildTypes i productFlavors productFlavors {staging {// …ext.betaDistributionGroupAliases=’hyper-internal-testers-1'}production {// …}} Now that the command is run correctly, let’s add that to Bitrise Gradle Run step Go to Workflow tab and add a step and place it below step. Gradle Run Deploy to Bitrise.io Expand , and add to . Config assembleStagingRelease crashlyticsUploadDistributionStagingRelease Gradle task to run Now start a new build in Bitrise manually or trigger new build by making pull request, you can see that the version code is increased for every build, crossed build gets deployed to Fabric to your defined tester groups. As an alternative, you can also use , just update config with your apps key and secret found in . Fabric/Crashlytics deployer settings Where to go from here I hope those tips are useful to you. Here are some more links to help you explore further Convert old Android workflows and configure new steps based on the old Gradle tasks on Bitrise Replace whole line containing a string using Sed Alternatives to Buddybuild? Simplifying Android app distribution with Beta by Crashlytics Fabric app for Android Studio Crashlytics distribution for app with multiple flavors Gradle plugins Setting up a new app in Crashlytics without the IDE plugin If you like this post, consider visiting and 🔥 my other articles apps