Just push a button
How much time it takes to release a React Native application to the iOS App Store and Android Play Store
It’s 2pm and my delivery manager is asking me to release our React Native application to the iOS and Android stores.
“Great! I am happy to release our application, just for your information, this will take an entire day.”
“What are you saying? It’s just pushing a button.
I don’t see why it’s so long?”
First of all, there are 2 main application stores (Apple and Google). The release process is a little bit different for each, and the testing workflow is different as well. In this article, I am going to cover a specific scenario: How to release a React Native application with a standalone build from expo.
create-react-native-app versus react-native-cli
If you are in charge of releasing your react native application, you need to understand 2 different application architectures generated with your CLI.
create-react-native-app
According to the official documentation, this solution is the simplest one. You can run your application on any OS with no build config. Xcode or Android Studio are not required. You just have to install another amazing tool called expo.
react-native-cli
If you want to use custom component for each platform or add React Native code into your existing application you are probably using this solution.
If you are looking for the workflow when you have “ejected” from expo, I hightly recommand theses 2 articles from the legendary Gant Laborde 🦄
Building a standalone app with expo
It’s 2pm and a half because of the coffee break and you are ready to deploy. Let’s do this!
Check the dependencies and run the build:
yarn
exp build:ios
This first task takes — at least — 30 minutes. I am lucky, at the office the connection is fast.
I have an idea, maybe I can run the android build in the meantine.
Bad news rookie. At the moment with expo, you can’t build for iOS and Android at the same time.
35 minutes later
Yeah! Build successful!
The application is available on expo servers, now I need to download the .ipa file. I am a developer, I can’t be bothered with mouse clicks on a website. Let’s open a terminal and download the build with curl .
curl -o app.ipa “$(exp url:ipa)”
28 minutes later
Download done!
Now I need to upload the .ipa file with Application Loader to the apple store servers (Because I don’t need to use Xcode with standalone builds).
34 minutes 55 seconds later
Build uploaded!
Guess what?
I can’t push the button yet, because my app is analysed by robots.
10 minutes 12 seconds later
My build just disappeared from Testflight! 😱
Listen to me rookie, releasing a native application is a complex task. You have no idea how works the replication of your build accross all the CDN’s in the world! Give me some time to process your build.
The good new is, you can follow the progress in the activity tab.
Probally less than 10 minutes later
Your app is back again!
But you have small extras steps to do: Provide export compliance information. It’s simple, you just need to push a button.
Straight after accepting the compliance your app should be available for your testing team 🎉
But wait a minute. I am not going to repeat this workflow everytime.
My friends know me as an automation machine. I wrote this little script to half-automate the process of releasing our react native application with standalone expo build.
Create a new file and run this script from a terminal
./bin/ios
It’s 5pm and your application is released for your end users!
Are you sure about that?
Rookie, you forgot the android version. You need to run the same script for your .apk
Even if the engineering team working on expo is the best in the world, you need to test on real devices. Developing with expo XDE is fine, but you can’t rely on the emulator for testing.
By the way, If you don’t have a release note and a testing team, there is no point to deploy.
Creating a slick testing workflow
Testing your application with the real world is hard. Expo is a great solution for developement but it’s not exactly the same as using the final build delivered to your users.
It reminds me this talk: “A new version of Firefox is available”. The mozilla team have 4 differents release channels Nightly, Aurora, Beta and Release.
The mozilla team have a routine: every Tuesday at 3pm it’s release day! Builds are deployed in release channel for millions of users.
Maybe we can follow this weekly routine? The last version is released in production every x week, and we have 2 differents channels for developement and quality insurance.
Fun part: the worflow for testing your standalone app is different on the 2 platforms.
How to onboard testers for iOS
- Add fullname and Apple ID on https://appstoreconnect.apple.com/ Apple store connect > Users and Roles
- Download Testflight
How to onboard testers for Android
- Add fullname and Google play account on https://play.google.com/apps/publish/ Google Play Console > Manage testers > Create list
It’s your lucky day rookie, you didn’t have problems with updates of npm packages, screenshot issues on the app store or release notes.
Your app is deployed. Remember the lesson of the day:
Deploying an app to the store takes–at leat–one day
Notes: You can use Over the Air Updates to bypass the validations in the stores and speed up the deploy deploy. But you have some limitations.
I hope this motivates you to start building the perfect workflow for releasing your React Native app. Just drop me a message if you have any questions — I would be glad to help you!
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