Releasing to the Google Play Store

This guide walks through releasing a code push app to the Google Play Store and applying a patch to that release.

The app we will be releasing in this guide is Time Shift, our demo code push app. (source)

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you have an existing Shorebird app. If you don’t have one, you can create one by following the code push quickstart guide.

Creating a release

Determine next release version

Navigate to your app on the Shorebird console to see the current set of releases. For our app, we see that the latest release version is 1.0.2+5, so the version of our next release will be 1.0.3+6.

Make code changes

Version 1.0.3+6 of Time Shift will change the default clock face from particle to generative.

To make this change, edit lib/main.dart:

   final clock = ClockFace.values.firstWhere(
     (clock) => clock.name == clockName,
-    orElse: () => ClockFace.particle,
+    orElse: () => ClockFace.generative,
   );

Verify that this change does what we expect by running the app with shorebird run.

Once this change has been verified, commit this change and push it to GitHub:

git add lib/main.dart
git commit -m "Change default clock face to generative"
git push

On GitHub

Update app version

Next, bump the app version in pubspec.yaml:

name: time_shift
description: Demo app showing Shorebird updates.
publish_to: "none"

-version: 1.0.2+5
+version: 1.0.3+6

environment:
  sdk: ">=2.19.4 <3.0.0"

Commit, tag, and push the change.

git add pubspec.yaml
git commit -m "Update app version to 1.0.3+6"
git tag v1.0.3+6
git push # Push the commit
git push --tags  # Push the tag

On GitHub

Create a Shorebird release

To create a Shorebird release, run shorebird release android. You should see output similar to the following:

$ shorebird release android
✓ Building release (17.0s)
✓ Fetching apps (0.3s)
✓ Detecting release version (0.2s)

🚀 Ready to create a new release!

📱 App: time_shift (51751336-6a7c-4972-b4ec-8fc1591fb2b3)
📦 Release Version: 1.0.3+6
🕹️ Platform: android (arm64, arm32, x86_64)

Would you like to continue? (y/N) Yes
✓ Fetching releases (70ms)
✓ Fetching Flutter revision (22ms)
✓ Creating release (61ms)
✓ Creating artifacts (2.5s)

✅ Published Release!

Your next step is to upload the app bundle to the Play Store.
./build/app/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab

See the following link for more information:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859152?hl=en

Upload to the Play Store

As per the instructions above, we must upload the generated .aab to the Play Store.

1. Navigate to the Play Console.
2. Choose your developer account (for us, it’s Shorebird.dev).
3. Select the Time Shift app.
4. Select “Testing -> Open Testing” from the side bar.
5. Click the “Create new release” button.

Upload the .aab file located at ./build/app/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab.

1. From the root directory of the project, run open ./build/app/outputs/bundle/release/ to open the folder containing the .aab in Finder.
2. Drag app-release.aab into the Play Console to upload.

Once the upload completes, the Play Store will correctly recognize the new version as 6 (1.0.3).

Click “Next” and then “Save” (both in the bottom-right corner) to submit.

This will take you to the publishing overview page. Click “Submit for review” to submit the release for review.

You should now see a release in the Play Store console with an “In review” status:

Now you must wait for the Play Store to approve the release.

Create a GitHub release

It’s recommended to create a GitHub release as well.

1. Navigate to https://github.com/shorebirdtech/time_shift/releases.
2. Click “Draft a new release”.
3. Choose the tag we created earlier (v1.0.3+6).
4. Title the release “v1.0.3+6”.
5. Add a description of the release (“Changes the default clock face to ‘generative’”).
6. Publish the release.

After the release is approved

Once the release has been approved, you will be able to download it from the Play Store.

Creating a patch

Patches can be pushed to fix bugs in the 1.0.3+6 release without requiring a new submission to the Play Store.

Make the change

Start by checking out the v1.0.3+6 release tag:

git checkout v1.0.3+6

Next, create a branch, as this change will represent a divergence from the main branch:

git checkout -b v1.0.3+6-patch1

For the purposes of this guide, we will change the default clock face back to particle in lib/main.dart:

     (clock) => clock.name == clockName,
-    orElse: () => ClockFace.generative,
+    orElse: () => ClockFace.particle,
   );

Commit the change and push our new patch branch:

git add lib/main.dart
git commit -m "Change default clock face to particle"
git push --set-upstream origin v1.0.3+6-patch1

Tag this commit as v1.0.3+6-patch1:

git tag v1.0.3+6-patch1
git push --tags

On GitHub

Create a Shorebird patch

Finally, push the patch with shorebird patch android. You should see output similar to the following:

$ shorebird patch android
✓ Building patch (17.2s)
✓ Fetching apps (0.7s)
✓ Detecting release version (0.2s)
✓ Fetching release (99ms)
✓ Fetching Flutter revision (13ms)
✓ Fetching release artifacts (0.2s)
✓ Downloading release artifacts (1.0s)
✓ Creating artifacts (1.0s)

🚀 Ready to publish a new patch!

📱 App: time_shift (51751336-6a7c-4972-b4ec-8fc1591fb2b3)
📦 Release Version: 1.0.3+6
📺 Channel: stable
🕹️  Platform: android [arm64 (135 B), arm32 (150 B), x86_64 (135 B)]

Would you like to continue? (y/N) Yes
✓ Creating patch (0.1s)
✓ Uploading artifacts (0.9s)
✓ Fetching channels (90ms)
✓ Promoting patch to stable (61ms)

✅ Published Patch!

This patch will now be available to users with version 1.0.3+6 of the app.

Cleanup

Delete the branch to keep the repository tidy:

git checkout main
git branch -D v1.0.3+6-patch1
git push origin --delete v1.0.3+6-patch1

Note

This change is still accessible via the v1.0.3+6-patch1 tag.