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Sumanth Perambuduri
Sumanth Perambuduri

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Build and Sign Android Apps using GitHub Actions

GitHub actions is really amazing because you can literally build your apps with just a push of your code to GitHub. I’ve been playing with GitHub actions lately and I really really love it. I’ve used GitHub actions before to build Python packages and Electron apps and I thought that why not for Android as well.

Before getting started, complete the following steps:

  • Encode your KeyStore file (.jks) to base64.

openssl base64 -A -in keystore.jks -out base64.txt

  • Copy the content of base64.txt and store it as SIGNINGKEYBASE64 in GitHub secrets.
  • Store your alias as ALIAS in GitHub secrets.
  • Store your keystore password as KEYSTOREPASSWORD and key password as KEYPASSWORD in GitHub secrets.

Now in your project create a folder “.github” and inside this folder create a folder “workflows”. Inside workflows folder create a file “build.yml” and add the below content in build.yml.

You are now good to go. So anytime you create a tag and push the tag to GitHub, the actions is going to build apk and aab files, sign them, make artifacts, create a release with the tag, upload the files in the release as assets.

Here’s an example project of the above usage:
GitamTransit

Want to use GitHub secrets in your Android Apps? Check out this post.

Top comments (4)

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vitalykarasik profile image
Vitaly Karasik

Hi, many thanks!
Regarding 'signingKeyBase64' - is the key and keystore the same thing (format)?
I already have my android keystore into Github secrets and it works nice for signing 3D Unity apps, but when I tried to use it in r0adkll/sign-android-release@v1, I received "Failed to load signer "signer #1"
java.io.EOFException" exception.

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supersuman profile image
Sumanth Perambuduri

Hey @vitalykarasik , I've found out the solution in issues.
Check out this link for the solution.

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alinavaie profile image
Ali Navaie

Hi
I did exactly same but I got this error:

Execution failed for task ':app:validateSigningRelease'.

Keystore file '/home/runner/work/SampleApp/SampleApp/android/app/my-upload-key.keystore' not found for signing config 'release'

I know 'my-upload-key.keystore' is not uploaded to my repository, but the questions is why it needs this file while I've already import the key base64 content in the action secret?

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alinavaie profile image
Ali Navaie