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Releases

Publish a Release​

In order to start pushing updates, you will need to create a release.

shorebird release android

Creating a release builds and submits your app to Shorebird. Shorebird saves the compiled Dart code from your application in order to make updates smaller in size.

Example output:

$ shorebird release android
✓ Building release (9.6s)
✓ Fetching apps (0.2s)
✓ Detecting release version (0.2s)
✓ Fetching releases (68ms)

🚀 Ready to create a new release!

📱 App: new_flutter_app (7a29188a-9363-426a-9a36-74a5e166373d)
📦 Release Version: 1.0.0+1
🕹️  Platform: android (arm64, arm32, x86_64)

Would you like to continue? (y/N) Yes
✓ Fetching Flutter revision (30ms)
✓ Updating release status (67ms)
✓ Creating artifacts (2.8s)
✓ Updating release status (62ms)

✅ 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

If your application supports flavors or multiple release targets, you can specify the flavor and target using the --flavor and --target options:

shorebird release --target ./lib/main_development.dart --flavor development
info

shorebird release wraps flutter build and can take any argument flutter build can. To pass arguments to the underlying flutter build you need to put flutter build arguments after a -- separator. For example: shorebird release android -- --dart-define="foo=bar" will define the "foo" environment variable inside Dart as you might have done with flutter build directly.

By default, shorebird release android builds an AppBundle (.aab). If you would like to also generate an Android Package Kit (.apk), use the following command:

shorebird release android --artifact apk
tip

If you would like to disable prompts and publish a release without confirmation, you can use the --force flag. This is especially useful when using shorebird release android in a CI environment.

shorebird release android --force

or

shorebird release ios-alpha --force

Manage Releases​

List Releases​

You can view all of your releases for your current app (as defined by your shorebird.yaml) on the Shorebird console.

Delete Releases​

danger

Deleting a release will remove all associated patches and artifacts and is not reversible.

You can delete a release for your current app (as defined by your shorebird.yaml) using shorebird releases delete.

Example output:

$ shorebird releases delete --version 1.0.3+1
✓ Fetched releases. (54ms)
Are you sure you want to delete release 1.0.3+1? (y/N) Yes
✓ Deleted release 1.0.3+1. (0.3s)

If your application supports flavors, you can specify the flavor using the --flavor option:

shorebird releases delete --flavor development

📲 Side-loading and MDM​

A common question we get asked, is does Shorebird require publishing to the App Store or Play Store?

No. Shorebird works fine with side-loading and mobile device management (MDM) on Android. We've not had anyone try Shorebird with iOS Developer Enterprise program, but we expect it to work just as well.

To build Shorebird for distribution via APK (e.g. side-loading), use the --artifact flag with the shorebird release command. For example:

shorebird release android --artifact=apk

That will produce both .apk and .aab files. You can distribute either or both as needed.