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Iván Valdés
Iván Valdés

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Automating Building Android APKs with GitHub Actions

#android #githubactions #automation

As part of my goal to decrease my smartphone addiction, I recently bought a Unihertz Jelly phone, which could be a good compromise between a smartphone and a dumbphone. The phone has a multi-purpose function button. You can assign it to specific pre-defined actions or launch any application. As I regularly use the phone screen in grayscale mode, I decided to assign the button to an application that would toggle this mode. I searched and couldn't find a simple app to toggle it when launching. So I decided to write my own. However, this previous background could be a post on its own.

As I've been trying to leverage GitHub actions for manual tasks, I searched GitHub and found many actions that could do this for me. I tried with a couple of them, and they didn't work. One of the issues is that the actions are using obsolete dependencies, and I spent way more time trying to make them run than I wanted.

I decided to make it work without a pre-built action and write all of the required steps in a GitHub workflow, which, in the end, was very simple. Here's the action. I will do a walk-through so you can use it in your projects.

name: Release APK

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - '*'
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This workflow will run when pushing a tag to a repository.

jobs:
  Gradle:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: checkout code
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
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This is the standard step to checkout the code. It can run with the latest checkout action (v3).

    - name: setup jdk
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        java-version: 17
        distribution: 'temurin'
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Then, we need to set up the JDK. Again, using the latest setup-java action (v3). I set the Java version to 17, which is the one that my Android Project uses. You can adjust the distribution, too. Refer to setup-javas documentation.

Now, to sign the released APK, we'll need to load the Keystore (you can read how to generate it on Android's official documentation).

   - name: Load keystore
      run: |
        echo "${{ secrets.KEYSTORE_FILE_CONTENTS }}" | base64 -d > keystore.jks && \
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The secret KEYSTORE_FILE_CONTENTS, contains the base64 encoded content of the keystore.jks file you generated. You can get the text for the secret by running cat keystore.jks | base64 -w0.

    cat <<EOL > local.properties
        storeFilePath=$PWD/keystore.jks
        storePassword=${{ secrets.RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD }}
        keyAlias=${{ secrets.RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS }}
        keyPassword=${{ secrets.RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD }}
        EOL
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The rest of the secrets are the ones you entered when configuring your keystore.

Next, we'll build the APK:

    - name: Build Release APK
      run: ./gradlew assembleRelease
      env:
        GRADLE_USER_HOME: ./gradle-config
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And set the current directory as a safe repository, as this is a known issue with actions/checkout@v3. And because we'll later use github-cli to do the release, I didn't want it to complain that it couldn't read the repository.

    - name: Set current directory as a safe repository
      run: git config --global --add safe.directory /github/workspace
    - uses: ButterCam/setup-github-cli@master
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Finally, release the APK and upload it to the repository's releases page.

    - name: Release using github cli
      run: gh release create ${GITHUB_REF##*/} ./app/build/outputs/apk/release/**.apk
      env:
       GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TOKEN }}
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You'll need to generate a token with repo access for this to work. For some reason, using the default repository's GITHUB_TOKEN won't work.

And here's the full YAML in case you want to copy-paste it. You can also check it in my repository.

name: Release APK

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - '*'
jobs:
  Release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: checkout code
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: setup jdk
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        java-version: 17
        distribution: 'temurin'
    - name: Load keystore
      run: |
        echo "${{ secrets.KEYSTORE_FILE_CONTENTS }}" | base64 -d > keystore.jks && \
        cat <<EOL > local.properties
        storeFilePath=$PWD/keystore.jks
        storePassword=${{ secrets.RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD }}
        keyAlias=${{ secrets.RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS }}
        keyPassword=${{ secrets.RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD }}
        EOL
    - name: Build Release APK
      run: ./gradlew assembleRelease
      env:
        GRADLE_USER_HOME: ./gradle-config
    - name: Set current directory as a safe repository
      run: git config --global --add safe.directory /github/workspace
    - uses: ButterCam/setup-github-cli@master
    - name: Release using github cli
      run: gh release create ${GITHUB_REF##*/} ./app/build/outputs/apk/release/**.apk
      env:
       GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TOKEN }}
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There's still one thing that needs configuration to sign the APK properly. You'll need to edit your app/build.gradle.kts file so we can feed the properties from GitHub secrets to the assmbleRelease task. Kudos to Willi Metzel's Stack Overflow answer. Inside android in app/build.gradle.kts add:

    signingConfigs {
        create("release") {
            val properties = Properties().apply {
                load(File("local.properties").reader())
            }
            storeFile = File(properties.getProperty("storeFilePath"))
            storePassword = properties.getProperty("storePassword")
            keyPassword = properties.getProperty("keyPassword")
            keyAlias = properties.getProperty("keyAlias")
        }
    }
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Then, add signingConfig = signingConfigs.getByName("release") to release inside buildTypes. It should look something like:

   buildTypes {
        release {
            isMinifyEnabled = false
            proguardFiles(
                getDefaultProguardFile("proguard-android-optimize.txt"),
                "proguard-rules.pro"
            )
            signingConfig = signingConfigs.getByName("release")
        }
    }
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See here for a complete reference to my app/build.gradle.kts.

Credits to r0adkll for his previous work; without it, building this would have been more difficult.

You can follow me at GitHub (@ivanvc). And check the repository (and source code for my grayscale switching app) if you're interested.

GitHub Repo

Top comments (4)

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androaddict profile image
androaddict •

Auto build means , automatically sent to internal testing to Google play console?

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ivanvc profile image
Iván Valdés •

No, currently, it only uploads the generated APK to GitHub releases. I plan on doing that later.

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gameingamasteras profile image
amila hay •

This is super helpful! 🙌 I'm trying to build a simple game APK—do you think this GitHub Actions setup would work for games too, or is the process different for game engines like Unity or Godot?

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