Updraft Fastlane Beta Action
In this blog post I will tell you about the “Updraft Fastlane Beta Action” that is available on Apps with love AG’s Github* and that you can use with Updraft. I would like to show the superpowers of Fastlane, how Fastlane actions work and especially how you can use it for beta app distribution integrated with Updraft.
*Disclaimer
We hope to publish our Fastlane Action to Fastlane Beta Actions soonish, but currently no new beta actions are published on the Fastlane documentation page. That’s why our Updraft Fastlane Action file is hosted on the Apps with love Github account - Apps with love is the provider of Updraft.
What is Fastlane?
Fastlane is an open-source toolset for automating the deployment and release of mobile apps. It is primarily used for automating the build, testing, code signing, and distribution of iOS and Android applications. Fastlane aims to streamline and simplify the often complex and manual processes involved in releasing mobile apps to the App Store and Google Play Store.
Why are we talking about Fastlane?
Let’s assume that you are a code person. Code appears in front of your eyes as a natural consequence of thinking. Everyone around you can feel the supernatural synergy that exists between your eye movement, fingers, keyboard, coffee and IDE. Coding is simple to you. It is an act of art. Methods are written like poetry lines and app architecture radiates like a symphony orchestra. Pablo Picasso of coding. Writing code is what you do best.
But from time to time you have to handle tedious tasks that are not suitable for immortals like you. Colleagues have informed you about company culture and tech procedures, of which non-coding tasks are a part of: how to create screenshots for the app store listing before releasing an app, what to use for beta builds distribution, how to deploy when the app is ready...And of course, ancient knowledge of code signing specific for iOS development. It really is not your cup of tea to care about edge DevOps issues but you have to do what you have to do. If only there was a Scrum role for tasks like this, while developers could just - develop?
After working on projects for some time and realizing that non-coding tasks take up a disproportionate amount of time - you can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a better way to handle these issues. There must be.
Someone in your company mentioned Fastlane a few days ago. And the project manager yesterday, too. It's definitely a buzzword. Worth checking. After you have taken some time to investigate Fastlane, it seems like a good fit to solve some of the above mentioned tedious tasks related to app deployment and distribution.
Fastlane Superpowers
Fastlane is an easy, if not the easiest way, to automate beta deployments and releases for your iOS and Android apps. The main features Fastlane provides are the following:
Capture screenshots automatically
Fastlane automatically captures screenshots in each language and device your app supports. In order for anyone on the team to be able to generate such screenshots, you can create and store a configuration. While Fastlane is capturing screenshots, you can easily work on other tasks - your work will not be interrupted.
Distribute beta builds
Easily publish new beta builds to your testers in order to get feedback as quickly as possible. With Fastlane you can automate incrementing the build version, code signing, building and uploading the app, setting a changelog and other time consuming beta distribution steps. Fastlane provides support for over 15 beta testing services (including TestFlight, Crashlytics Beta, Play, Hockey).
Publish apps
Fastlane automates the app store deployment process. Create a repeatable custom workflow to build, upload and distribute new releases to the app store. Upload and manage all of your app's metadata. Automatically submit new versions of your app for review.
Code signing for iOS
Store your code signing identities and profiles in your own private, encrypted git repository to securely sync them across machines. Once set up, signed builds can be reproduced on any computer by any developer on your team.
Continuous integration
Fastlane integrates effortlessly into existing CI services such as Bitrise, Circle CI, Jenkins, or Travis CI.
Fastlane Actions and Plugins
Here is where the real magic happens. After installing Fastlane, preferably with Bundler, navigate in the terminal to your project's directory and initialize Fastlane. Now you can stand on the shoulders of Fastlane giants who did a tremendous job: Over 400 built-in actions separated in sections like Testing, Building or Screenshots, alongside numerous plugins are available. If you think that's not enough - feel free to make your own action or plugin that meets your team specific needs.
Throughout the list of the most common Fastlane actions you can see real benefits of using Fastlane in your project.
1. Produce
Create new iOS apps both on iTunes Connect and Developer Portal
2. Cert
Take care of the iOS code signing certificate
3. Sign
Take care of the iOS provisioning profile
4. Match
Share one code signing identity across your development team
5. Gym
Build and package your mobile app, generate signed IPA or APK file
6. Snapshot
Generate localized screenshots for different device types and languages for the app store
7. Deliver
Upload screenshots, metadata and IPA file
8. Pem
Automatically generate and renew your push notification profiles
9. Scan
Run automated tests on your apps
Fastlane Lanes
Fastlane actions are powerful. Workload can be reduced a lot by using them. And they have another ace up their sleeve: Fastlane provides the option of creating lanes. An arbitrary number of actions can be embedded together under the same name and can be called whenever, wherever. Lanes can be composed from actions and/or other lanes.
Example:
desc "My lane description" lane :deploy_appstore do // invoke actions or lanes end
Fastlane Fastfile
After the Fastlane initialization is done inside your project - Fastfile is created. Inside Fastfile you can configure lanes to support your team’s deployment workflows. Fastfile is written in Ruby. Could be better, could be worse. Lanes can be called from the terminal with a single command.
Example 1:
fastlane beta
lane :beta do increment_build_number build_app upload_to_testflight end
Example 2:
fastlane release
lane :release do capture_screenshots build_app upload_to_app_store # Upload the screenshots and the binary to iTunes slack # Let your team-mates know the new version is live end
Configurations
There is another great and powerful thing related to configurations: You can store all your configuration values in the ".env" file. Use specific env (store-staging, store-prod, ...) by adding the suffix "--env store-staging" while running Fastlane commands.
Fastlane at Apps with love
We at Apps with love, the developers of Updraft, took it a step further: You can embed sophisticated lanes that have passed the test of time to your project. Apps with love Fastlane provides a predefined setup for Fastlane which can easily be imported to your project.
Apps with love Fastlane contains lanes that you need for almost every project, saving time to configure it. It’s such a great benefit of having a standardized tool/setup, especially when working on many different projects at once. Without Fastlane as a common denominator we would probably witness a big chaos. Imagine having a different setup for every project with its own tools, without some sort of standard..yikes.
Fastlane is a real improvement for your workflow. Using Fastlane actions almost feels like cheating. But using built-in actions, custom actions and plugins is a real game changer. And the possibility to nest all these superpowers inside lanes makes it possible to squash hours of work into just one command. Marvelous!
Updraft App Distribution Fastlane Action
If you have followed the instructions above and incorporated Apps with love Fastlane in your project you should see the action "post_build_notification" inside the "deploy_updraft" lane. This is not a regular Fastlane action but it's not a lane from Fastfile either. The answer lies at the first line of Fastfile. There are “Fastlane_tools” included inside our Fastfile, which contain Apps with love custom actions.
Apps with love “Fastlane_tools” contains six custom actions:
fastlane ensure_appstore_environment
Makes sure the current environment values match the necessary values for an App Store build
fastlane ensure_correct_branch
Ensures the user is on the correct git branch, otherwise prompts the user to change it
fastlane ensure_correct_version
Ensures the version number is correct, otherwise prompts the user to change it
fastlane updraft
uploads a release produced by Gym to Updraft for testing
fastlane post_build_notification
Sends local and Slack notification for uploaded builds
fastlane finish_release
Prompts the user to tag and push the release accordingly
These are our own Apps with love custom actions. We use them either in Fastfile or inside the terminal when necessary. One of them is so interesting that we made a proposal to make it a standard Fastlane action: The Fastlane Updraft action.
Fastlane Action for beta app distribution with Updraft
The Updraft action is similar to other app distribution services provided on the documentation page of Fastlane within the ‘Beta’ section. Updraft action is used inside the Apps with love Fastlane predefined setup. Updraft is part of the "deploy_updraft" lane that exists with the purpose to build the app and upload it to Updraft. But really, the Updraft action is part of Fastlane_tools just like the post_build_notification action - an Apps with love custom action. Updraft can upload app builds to Updraft, no matter if it is an IPA, APK or AAB file.
Examples
updraft( upload_url: "https://getupdraft.com/api/app_upload/123a4ab5678c91234cec567891b2babc/ dde1cd23f4567a8cbdb91d23456b7c89/", ipa: "./fastlane/ipa_file.ipa", changelog: "New cool feature for iOS", ) updraft( upload_url: "https://getupdraft.com/api/app_upload/987a6ab5432c19876cec543219b8babc/ dde1cd23f4567a8cbdb91d23456b7c89/", apk: "./fastlane/apk_file.apk", changelog: "New cool feature for Android", )
updraft( upload_url: "https://getupdraft.com/api/app_upload/987a6ab5432c19876cec543219b8babc/ dde1cd23f4567a8cbdb91d23456b7c89/", aab: "./fastlane/aab_file.aab", changelog: "Upload app bundle to Store", )
Parameters
upload_url
Project specific API Upload URL. You can get this in your Updraft project settings.
ipa
Application file attached to the request. Path to your .ipa file.
apk
Application file attached to the request. Path to your .apk file.
aab
Application file attached to the request. Path to your .aab file.
changelog
Additional release notes for this uploaded build. This text will be added to all email notifications.
build_type
You can also specify the type of assembly.
custom_branch
You can also specify the name of the branch you deployed your build.
git_tag
You can add your Git tag.
git_commit_hash
You can add your Git commit hash.
git_url
You can add the URL to git
Summary
Why are we writing all of this in a blog post? After Google's withdrawal as the main sponsor of Fastlane, it's uncertain how long the community can continue to develop and maintain Fastlane. Consequently, new Fastlane actions are not being accepted into the public GitHub documentation, and unfortunately, our merge request to publish the Fastlane Action on https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/#beta has not been processed yet. That’s why our Updraft Fastlane Action is published on our Apps with love developer Github account.
Nevertheless, using Fastlane for your project can be extremely beneficial. With Updraft Fastlane Beta App Distribution Action, your developers can integrate our app distribution service into their CI pipelines even faster and more efficiently. Your testers will have up-to-date beta apps for testing at any time.
Please, contact us when your project is done and tell us - how many hours have you saved?