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The Mattermost Mobile Build Process

1. Prerequisites

In order to run all the Fastlane scripts, you will need an Apple machine. The steps can be run manually, but the scripts make things much more easy.

You must have ruby 2.7. You can use rbenv to manage your ruby version.

The Fastlane scripts rely heavily on environment variables. In order to manage them, we recommend defining them in a .env file in the fastlane folder (PROJECT_DIR/fastlane/.env).

The first time you run this, you will need to install fastlane. On the fastlane folder (PROJECT_DIR/fastlane/) run bundle install.

2. Build and version bump

To bump the build number, we recommend using the following set of environment variables:

export INCREMENT_BUILD_NUMBER=true
export BUILD_NUMBER=X
export COMMIT_CHANGES_TO_GIT=true
export BRANCH_TO_BUILD=main
export GIT_LOCAL_BRANCH=bump-build

Where X is the build number. The build number MUST always be greater than the last build number used. Uploading two builds with the same build number to the stores will fail.

For version bumps, also add the following environment variable:

VERSION_NUMBER=X.Y.Z

Where X.Y.Z is the version number.

With the setup done, you can run the following commands, depending on what you want to bump:

bundle exec fastlane set_app_build_number to bump only the build number.
bundle exec fastlane set_app_version to bump only the version number.
bundle exec fastlane set_app_version_build to bump both the build and version number.

The command should create the branch, and commit the changes. Once that is done, push the branch and create a PR.

3. Create a build and publish

When the version bump PR is merged, you can create the build. The build is created on the CI system and automatically sent to the stores. The Release Team takes care of publishing them in the beta or release track.

In order to trigger the CI, you must create a new branch based on the commit you want to compile (usually the head of the main branch or the head of the release branch). The branch name has to follow one of the following patterns:

build-X where x is the build number for beta apps.
build-release-x where x is the build number for official releases.

When you create the branch, you will see that the CI system will build the apps. When the process finishes, the apps get posted in the “Release: Mobile Apps” channel.

If the build fails for one platform only, you shouldn’t run the build for both platforms again because it will have a duplicate build number which will fail on upload. To release for one platform at a time, use the following branch names:

build-android-beta-X where X is the build number for Android beta apps.
build-android-release-X where X is the build number for official Android releases.
build-ios-beta-X where X is the build number for iOS beta apps.
build-ios-release-X where X is the build number for iOS official releases.

4. Common problems and workarounds

Fastlane forces me to update it, and now the version won’t bump because the branch is not clean.

You can set the COMMIT_CHANGES_TO_GIT environment variable to false. That will remove the clean check, but you will need to commit the changes yourself.

5. Environment variables