Manager version-code/build-number with git tag for Mobile App

TLDR;

• Use git tag to store version-code (aka build-number for iOS, for easier, I only mention version-code from now on)
• Auto increase version-code and add a tag when building a new release
• Version code is synced between developers/CI
• Can be used for both iOS and Android
• Why we need this => check Read More

Result

The build process before 😬

1. Manually increase version, version-code
2. Manually switch environment (I have dev, stage and production)
3. Run fastlane to build iOS and Android
4. Wait build complete and manually add tag and push tag

The build process after 🚀🚀🚀

1. Run the script

yarn build-release

Yes! that's it. Only run one command. The build-release script build with environment=stage by default

Let's do it

(you can read more at Read More)

1) tag name: because my repo contains multiple projects, so for mobile app, I added a prefix: mobile, and also the environment: staging or production (no need for dev)

Format: //v-
Example: mobile/staging/v3.0.0-233, mobile/production/v3.0.0-400

I use the same version, and version-code for both iOS, Android to reduce the confusion here. Because in my team, we always release iOS, Android together

2) To configure the mobile, I also use some simple search and replace to set: version, version-code, android manifest file, ios info.plist, entitlement file, etc. But that's out of scope for this post. I will share the script in another blog :P

3) Tools

• I use JS with: fs-extra, simple-git

The process

1) Set environment (opt): staging or production

• Skip this step if you don't have

2) Get latest tag and increase by one

• Fetch all tags => to make sure we have the latest tag (largest tag number)
• Get latest tag for mobile

git tag --list mobile/* --sort=-taggerdate

• Increase tag, push back

Full code:

async function getNextVerionCode(env) {
  try {
    console.log(`--- Git fetch --tags...`);
    await git.fetch("--tags");
    const result = await git.tag(["--list", `mobile/*`, "--sort=-taggerdate"]);
    if (!result) {
      throw new Error("mobile/production tags is missing");
    }
    const latestTag = result.split("\n")[0];
    if (!latestTag) {
      throw new Error("cannot parse tag");
    }
    const versionCode = parseInt(latestTag.split("-")[1]);
    if (!versionCode) {
      throw new Error("cannot parse version code");
    }
    return versionCode + 1;
  } catch (err) {
    console.warn(`getNextVersionCode error: ${err}`);
  }
}

3) Set version-code with the tag
Full code:

async function gitTagVersionCode(versionCode) {
  try {
    const versionTag = `v${appInfo.version}-${versionCode}`;

    let tag = argBuildLane === "staging" ? `mobile/staging/${versionTag}` : `mobile/production/${versionTag}`;
    console.log(`--- Git tag -a ${tag}...`);

    await git.tag(["-a", tag, "-m", `build release ${tag}`]);
    await git.push("origin", tag);
  } catch (err) {
    console.warn(`gitGagAppVersion error: ${err}`);
  }
}

4) Call fastlane to build

• At this step, we already have environment setup and correct version-number, the last step is call fastlane to build and upload to testflight

Read more

The project

• react-native cross-platform for iOS, Android
• mono repo, so the repo is including backend, DevOps, web app, mobile app

Some other ways to store version-code (you can skip this)

1) https://proandroiddev.com/configuring-android-project-version-name-code-b168952f3323#.uccnmsg8b

This is using git-describe: which is not fit for my project, because I need to use different tags for each project. For example: web/production-v1.0.0, mobile/production-1.1.0

2) https://wadehuang36.github.io/2018/05/18/use-git-tag-for-manage-app-version.html

Like above, but using another tag name