CI/CD in iOS Development

1

GitHub Actions

The real CI server. I've not mastered it yet, I have to be honest. However, I could configure it in order to run our Fastlane actions on it. It was hard, I won't deny, but extremely rewarding in terms of new knowledge acquired and time saved because of the CI/CD benefits I've described above. Note that Github Actions is not the only CI server available for us as iOS developers, but it's popular. I have to mention Bitrise as the best alternative I've used in the past, and also CircleCI, which is also popular.

#DevOps Tools #Continuous Integration #Continuous Deployment 275 social mentions

2

fastlane

Fastlane deserves my deepest respect. The app automation toolset by excellence, life is better since it came to existence. So, what exactly means "app automation toolset"? According to their headline, it is "The easiest way to build and release mobile apps. Fastlane handles tedious tasks so you don’t have to." In practice, this means that things you would do using Xcode, or leveraging the complex xcodebuild cli, are also possible to do using by writing a straightforward ruby-based Fastlane script. Fastlane comes with several tools for different purposes, but let's first start by explaining how a Fastlane script, or Fastfile, is structured.

#Development Tools #Continuous Integration #Application Builder 41 social mentions

3

TestFlight

Let's explain this with an example. So you have your CI pipeline that runs whenever you are attempting to merge something into develop. So you create a PR, the CI pipeline runs and great! The tests passed! You merge your code into develop. You know now beta testers have to test it. That's when CD enters into play. We'll use our beloved CI Server again, and will create a new pipeline whenever we merge something into this branch. Whenever we merge into develop, we'll increment the build number, archive the app to generate an IPA, and send the IPA to TestFlight. That is Continuous Delivery. Of course we can extend it, and do something else when it is merged into main, for instance.

#Developer Tools #Beta Testing / Mobile App Distribution #Beta Testing 23 social mentions

4

CircleCI

The real CI server. I've not mastered it yet, I have to be honest. However, I could configure it in order to run our Fastlane actions on it. It was hard, I won't deny, but extremely rewarding in terms of new knowledge acquired and time saved because of the CI/CD benefits I've described above. Note that Github Actions is not the only CI server available for us as iOS developers, but it's popular. I have to mention Bitrise as the best alternative I've used in the past, and also CircleCI, which is also popular.

#Continuous Integration #Continuous Deployment #DevOps Tools 61 social mentions

5

Bundler

Let's suppose you have your Fastlane correctly set, the next step would be to add bundler to your project in case you haven't, and add a line to install Fastlane, and possibly another one to install Cocoapods. Now, let's define two workflow files. Both of them needs to be located in a folder called workflows, in another folder called .github.

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