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.

	name: Build
	on:
	push:
	branches:
	- 'main'
	jobs:
	Build:
	runs-on: ubuntu-latest
	steps:
	- uses: actions/checkout@v3
	- uses: kaisugi/action-regex-match@v1.0.0
	id: regex-match
	with:
	text: ${{ github.event.head_commit.message }}
	regex: '^v[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$'
	- name: Setup JDK
	uses: actions/setup-java@v3
	with:
	distribution: 'zulu'
	java-version: '17'
	cache: 'gradle'
	- name: Build App
	run: |
	bash ./gradlew assembleRelease
	bash ./gradlew bundleRelease
	- name: Move files
	if: ${{ steps.regex-match.outputs.match != '' }}
	run: |
	mv app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release-unsigned.apk app/build/outputs/app-release.apk
	mv app/build/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab app/build/outputs/app-release.aab
	- name: Sign App
	if: ${{ steps.regex-match.outputs.match != '' }}
	id: sign_app
	uses: ilharp/sign-android-release@v1.0.4
	with:
	releaseDir: app/build/outputs
	signingKey: ${{ secrets.ANDROID_SIGNING_KEY }}
	keyAlias: ${{ secrets.ANDROID_KEY_ALIAS }}
	keyStorePassword: ${{ secrets.ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD }}
	keyPassword: ${{ secrets.ANDROID_KEY_PASSWORD }}
	- name: Build Changelog
	if: ${{ steps.regex-match.outputs.match != '' }}
	id: changelog
	uses: ardalanamini/auto-changelog@v3
	with:
	mention-authors: false
	mention-new-contributors: false
	include-compare: false
	semver: false
	- name: Create Release
	if: ${{ steps.regex-match.outputs.match != '' }}
	id: create_release
	uses: ncipollo/release-action@v1.13.0
	with:
	artifacts: "app/build/outputs/app-release-signed.aab, app/build/outputs/app-release-signed.apk"
	body: ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.changelog }}
	tag: ${{ github.event.head_commit.message }}
	name: Release ${{ github.event.head_commit.message }}
	token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

view raw android-build.yml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

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.

Comments

[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.

[Sumanth Perambuduri]

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

[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?

[Ali Navaie]

Solution:
stackoverflow.com/questions/730242...