In my last couple of posts (here and here) I talked a bit about using the ApkTool to repack an Android APK in order to update an Android application to target different environments. To make this easier I’ve just published a preview of an extension for Azure DevOps.
The ApkTool Build and Release Task extension can be installed from the Visual Studio Marketplace or via the Azure DevOps editing experience, by searching for ApkTool.
Build the Android APK
Before we walk through using the ApkTool task I wanted to point out that I typically separate the build and the release pipelines. However, the ApkTool task can be integrated into your build process, if that’s how you want to configure your devops process.
The build process for a Flutter app might look similar to the following (typically for a production app I’ll have an additional task that updates the version number).
Release Pipeline
In the release pipeline the basic set of steps are to:
- Unpack the APK (using the ApkTool task)
- Modify a configuration file to change the environment
- Pack the APK (using the ApkTool task again)
- Sign and Zipalign the APK
- Push the APK to App Center for distribution
To get started, let’s add the various steps to the release pipeline. The ApkTool, once installed into your Azure DevOps instance, can be found by simply searching the tasks for ‘apktool’.
My release pipeline looks like the following.
Note: I’m using the Replace Tokens task to update the configuration of my application – you might decide to use a different task, or invoke a powershell script to do your own app customisation.
Unpack with the ApkTool Task
To unpack the Apk using the ApkTool task, you simply need to select the Unpack (decode) option for ApkTool Action and then provide the path to the apk and the name of the output folder.
Updating App Configuration
In my scenario I’m simply updating some text in a file (config.txt) that’s packaged with my application. The Replace Tokens task allows me to search for a regular expression and then replace it. In this case the group “Default Config” will be replaced by the release pipeline variable with the key Default Config.
Packing with the ApkTool Task
Once you’re done updating the app contents (you might want to also update icons and/or modify the manifest file) you can then use the ApkTool task to pack the Apk. Simply specify the Pack (build) option for the ApkTool Action, specify the Input folder (this should match the Output folder from when you unpacked the Apk) and then name of the apk to be generated.
Signing and Distributing to AppCenter
After you’ve repacked your Android application to a new Apk you’ll need to sign and zipalign your application. This can be done using the Android signing task, provided by Microsoft.
Once you’re application has been signed, it’s ready for distribution. For this you can use the App Center distribute task to push your Apk to App Center and have it automatically made available to a specific group(s) of testers.
Multiple Environments
Now that you have a release pipeline that repacks your application for a specific environment, you should consider having different stages in your release pipeline. Each stage can repack the application for a different environment.
Having a multi-stage release pipeline allows you to set up a single pipeline to progress a single build of your application from dev, to test, staging and through to production (or whatever your sequence of environments is). Each stage can have different approval gates, for example:
- Dev – The first stage of your pipeline can be setup to automatically release on each build (you builds could be a CI build, or scheduled)
- Test – Deployment to test can require approval from the test team, so they know which build they’re currently testing
- Staging – Deployment to staging might require approval from the test team and customer support (depending on whether there are customers that assist with pre-release testing)
- Production – Deployment to production might require approval from test team, customer support and product owner/manager.
Hopefully the ApkTool task for Azure DevOps will make it easy for you to setup a release pipeline. Feel free to provide feedback on the task – it’s preview at the moment but mainly because I haven’t got around to adding documentation etc.
Hi Nick, Is there any way to do same thing in IPA?