ZERO TO STORES GUIDE

Build and Release

Tutorial Video

Video recording in progress. Available soon.

Build Your App

With everything configured, it's time to trigger your first build. Codika enforces a strict release process. New releases can only be created from the dev branch. A new release will bump the app version using the chosen bump type, create a new release branch for the specified environment and push it to the remote repository.

As an example, if your app is currently at version 1.2.3 and you create a new release for the staging environment with a minor version bump, the dev branch will be updated to 1.3.0 and a new branch will be created with the name release/v1.3.0-stag.

codika app build 

Command Arguments

codika app build --bump <bump_type>

• --bump: The type of bump to use. Can be major, minor, or patch.

Your app is now being built on Codemagic! The app should take about 10 minutes to build and sign.

Release Your App

Your app will be directly available on TestFlight for the staging environment. For android there is still one more step to go. Google Play store forces users to manually provide the first version of the app. This is because they determine the package name of an app based on that file, you can't provide it in the Play Console.

Go to the Google Play Console and navigate to the Internal Testing tab. Click on the Upload APK button and select the staging environment.

App Versions Overview

To keep track of the different versions that your app has, codika provides a handy command that prints an overview of the different versions available.

$ codika app versions

╭───────────┬───────────────┬────────╮
│ Version   │     Stag      │  Prod  │
├───────────┼───────────────┼────────┤
│ 1.0.1     │       ●       │        │
╰───────────┴───────────────┴────────╯

This command lists all the versions of your app across all environments. It does so by checking the branches in your repository.

Limitations

If one of your builds fails for some reason on Codemagic, the branch will still exists and the codika app versions command will still list it.

What's Next?

You've successfully triggered your first build and created a new release branch. You're app is now available through TestFlight and can be installed on your phone.

Next, we'll explore the code push capabilities of Shorebird, so you can push fixes instantly to specific versions of your app without waiting for App Store review. Let's continue! 🚀