August 2021 Summaries

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in the usage of mobile apps, with consumers spending an average of 30% more time on mobile apps daily than in 2019. This shift is driven by various factors, including contactless payment apps, gaming, mobile shopping, and video conferencing apps. To build successful mobile apps that continue to thrive post-pandemic, mobile teams should adopt practices such as building inclusive apps with accessibility features, rethinking app discovery tactics through optimization and in-app recommendation systems, embracing remote work best practices, and adopting Mobile DevOps tools to ensure stability and quality. By adapting to these changes, mobile teams can deliver optimal user experiences, drive retention, and remain competitive in the ever-evolving mobile application market.

When it comes to mobile shopping, speed and stability are crucial as most users will leave a site or an app that takes longer than three seconds to load, with the bounce rate increasing even further with loading time. Mobile commerce is on the rise, with Christmas Day in 2020 seeing 52% of revenue coming from smartphones, surpassing the halfway point for the first time. Apps convert better than websites but are also more fragmented, making it a must for companies to improve speed, stability, and performance to compete. Pre-production testing, such as UI, unit, and real device testing, can help tackle the challenges of the fragmented production environment by accurately predicting the app's behavior on each platform. Monitoring app performance using APM solutions helps detect deep-level application performance problems before users report them, with automated testing practices helping predict the app's behavior on all supported platforms and fix bugs early on. Ultimately, fast, frictionless, and enjoyable experiences for customers are crucial for user acquisition, conversion, and retention rates, as well as ratings and downloads; and ultimately, revenue.

Gitflow is a branching model for Git that has gained popularity due to its suitability for collaboration and scaling development teams. It involves creating branches for hotfixes, testing workflows, and continuous integration, which are automated through Github Checks and Bitrise Workflows. The process ensures that changes are merged into the Main branch while keeping the Develop branch up to date, but it can lead to edge cases where errors occur during merge due to concurrent updates on the same commit. To manage these edge cases, developers must be aware of the sequence of events and adjust their workflows accordingly, such as switching off the pre-merge toggle or using Github Checks to track the status of testing on a commit.

You've successfully created your KMM CI/CD pipeline on Bitrise by integrating Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) into your existing workflow. To get started with KMM, you need to have knowledge of Kotlin and install the necessary prerequisites such as Java JDK version 11, Ruby, Bundler, Android Studio, Xcode, and the Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile plugin for Android Studio. You can create a new KMM project using Android Studio and set up your first KMM project with a shared module. To integrate KMM with Bitrise, you need to create a free account, add your repository, configure the workflow stack, and set up the webhook. After setting up the workflow stack, you can add steps to run different Gradle tasks for your KMM app, including changing the Java version, adding CocoPods install and Recreate User Schemes steps, and building with Xcode. You can now run your KMM CI/CD workflow manually or schedule it to run automatically at a specific time. By using Bitrise's Gen2 build infrastructure, you can reduce build times even further. With this setup, you can start building and releasing your applications seamlessly without extra effort.

Bitrise has introduced a new Teams plan, which offers a credit-based pricing model with more flexibility and performance than its previous concurrent execution-based plans. The new Teams plan allows users to choose from various compute options based on their build needs, with each option consuming different amounts of credits per minute. It also features faster build times, lower timeouts, and increased parallelism. New customers can start using the Teams plan today, while existing Bitrise users will be migrated to the new plan in the future. The Teams plan is available as a free trial for two weeks, during which 500 credits are provided.

New users on Bitrise now have access to the Teams plan, a redesigned Free build experience, and Velocity plans, which offer flexible concurrency limitations and faster build platforms. The Teams plan is credit-based and provides several benefits, including access to Gen2's fastest build platform, customizable compute options, and increased build limits. Existing users can migrate to Teams or keep using their current plans, with the option to upgrade to a bigger concurrency-based plan until March 31st, 2022.

Flutter is Google's UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, desktop, and embedded devices from a single codebase. The latest release of Flutter 2.2 offers updates that make it easier to use than ever. Bitrise, a Mobile DevOps platform, supports Flutter apps with various features such as native app development, easy code signing, and deployment to testers and app stores. To migrate a Flutter app from Jenkins to Bitrise, one needs to create a free account, add the repository, set up the build configuration for Flutter apps, and configure the build workflow with Steps such as managing dependencies, running UI tests, and deploying Android and iOS apps. The process involves adding Environment Variables, selecting integration Steps, and setting up Webhooks. With Bitrise, one can reduce manual tasks, speed up the CI/CD pipeline, and improve app release efficiency.

To integrate Espresso tests with AWS Device Farm and Bitrise, users need to create an AWS Device Farm project, prepare their device pool, install the necessary AWS CLI, configure their account, and add credentials. They then need to add two new steps to their CI workflow in Bitrise: Amazon Device Farm File Deploy and Amazon Device Farm Runner. These steps require parameters such as AWS Access Key, Device Farm Project ARN, Upload Type, Test Package Filename, and Device Farm Android Device Pool ARN. After configuring the steps, users can run their Espresso tests on a device pool using Bitrise's CI server. The integration allows for fast and reliable testing of Android UI apps without requiring additional infrastructure or maintenance.

Sofy.ai is a no-code mobile app testing platform used by several major companies including Microsoft and British Telecom. It offers a range of features such as Test Planning, Test Development, Test Lab, Test Execution, and Reporting, which can be integrated with CI/CD workflows for seamless automation. The platform's "Create once and Run Anywhere" AI Test Automation feature allows users to set up tests once and run them automatically on different devices without writing any code. Sofy improves productivity by automating tasks of quality and monitoring across the entire development cycle, making it a game-changer for test engineers who can focus on testing while letting Sofy take care of setup and reporting.

The process of deploying updates to mobile apps is more complex than for web apps due to the involvement of official app publication platforms like Google Play and iOS App Store, which offer little control over update publication and require users to upgrade their apps before receiving updates. To overcome this, developers can employ various techniques such as regular production release trains, mobile-focused CI/CD tools, caching app dependencies, running build jobs in parallel on multiple VMs, automating deployment to app stores and testing platforms, deploying experimental features or updates under feature flags, and monitoring releases for crashes. By implementing these strategies, developers can make the mobile app development life cycle more forgiving of bugs and ensure timely fixes are delivered to users.