May 2022 Summaries

CI/CD stands for continuous integration and continuous delivery, two practices that have gained significant attention in recent years. These practices aim to automate as much of the manual effort as possible required to get new code from a developer's IDE into the hands of users. Continuous integration (CI) involves verifying the viability of each code commit using automated checks, while continuous delivery (CD) automates the delivery of builds that pass the CI checks into production-like environments for further testing and review. In mobile app development, CI/CD is critical due to the unique challenges and costs associated with deploying bugs in production. Adopting a self-hosted or SaaS-based mobile CI/CD tool can help streamline workflows, reduce time to market, and increase productivity among developers. To set up an effective CI/CD pipeline for mobile development, it's essential to consider factors such as hosting, platform support, configuration, integrations, concurrency, pricing, and support. Best practices include adopting a culture of frequent code commits, keeping CI checks short, and optimizing pipelines to reduce build times. By implementing a basic CI/CD pipeline using a tool like Bitrise, mobile app developers can automate repetitive tasks, save time, and deliver high-quality apps faster.

The debate surrounding whether to adopt on-premise or cloud-based mobile testing is centered around control, security, cost, and scalability. On-premise mobile testing offers complete control over infrastructure, better latency, and security, but comes with huge setup costs, high maintenance requirements, and the need for dedicated support. In contrast, cloud-based mobile testing provides ease of establishment, value-add features, transparent cost of ownership, automatic scalability, and low maintenance, but introduces provider lock-in, data breach risks, and reliance on third-party providers. Ultimately, the choice between on-premise and cloud-based mobile testing depends on the specific needs and requirements of each project or team, with cloud-based solutions often being the most convenient and cost-effective option for small to medium-sized teams.

The finance app development space is highly competitive with a forecasted compound annual growth rate of 25%. To differentiate offerings and attract users, developers must prioritize features such as user experience, layered security, functional accessibility, and more. The NatWest Bankline mobile team shares practices and processes to ensure their app continues to serve customers in the best possible way, including conducting user trials and prioritizing accessibility. Rigorous testing before pushing to production is also crucial for finance apps, which are less tolerant of bugs due to their delicate nature. Employing mobile-centric CI/CD tools, such as Bitrise, can help teams find bugs faster and save time. The future of fintech demands innovation, with predicted improvements in AI-powered interaction, personalization, and user experience. To stay on par with innovation, developers should consider moving to a cloud-hosted, mobile-centric CI/CD platform like Bitrise.

To build and package a Flutter desktop app for macOS using Bitrise, you need to start by setting up your project on GitHub and then connecting it to Bitrise. You then select the "Flutter project" and choose the Xcode stack for macOS apps. Next, you configure code signing for your app with Bitrise and add steps to automate the build process, including installing pods, running the Flutter build command, building an Xcode archive, deploying to Bitrise.io, and creating a .dmg file. Once the workflow is set up, you can push your changes to GitHub, run the build, and download the .dmg file to install the app on your local machine. Additionally, you can create a .dmg file for your macOS app by using NodeJS and NPM to generate an AppDmg configuration file and then running the `appdmg` command.

In the software development industry, there's a growing emphasis on delivering features and updates quickly to customers at the lowest time-to-market. However, this can come at the cost of internal codebase quality, which is essential for long-term reliability and maintainability. Test-driven development (TDD) offers a solution by providing a disciplined method to address internal quality and train developers to design better software. TDD involves writing tests before coding, then writing code to make the tests pass, with the goal of improving code quality, reducing maintenance costs, and increasing developer confidence. While TDD has benefits, such as improved code quality and reduced debugging efforts, it also has trade-offs, including slower development times and increased maintenance overhead. To get started with TDD for mobile development, developers can use unit testing frameworks and libraries supported by their language or framework of choice, and integrate tests into the CI/CD pipeline to automate the process and get feedback from tests faster.

This tutorial guides users through building and packaging a Flutter Linux desktop app using Bitrise, a CI/CD platform. To start, users need to build their application on the targeted platform, in this case, Linux. The required packages for Linux development include the Flutter SDK, clang, cmake, ninja-build, pkg-config, libgtk-3-dev, and liblzma-dev. Users can use the `flutter build linux` command to create a binary executable that includes required libraries and data assets. To deploy their app to Bitrise, users must log in to their account, connect their GitHub repository, and select the suitable stack for their application. The CI/CD workflow involves adding script steps to install prerequisites, enable Flutter desktop for Linux, run the `flutter build` command, copy the build folder to the deployment directory, and deploy the app to Bitrise.io. After a successful build, users can download the artifacts, unzip the folder, and open the app executable file on their Ubuntu machine.

Google I/O 2022 was a significant event that showcased various updates and announcements from Google. The keynote by Sundar Pichai emphasized support for communities in different countries, including Ukraine, India, and Bangladesh. Key highlights included the expansion of Google Maps' Immersive view powered by Google Cloud Immersive Stream, improved YouTube features such as auto-generated chapters and auto-translated captions, and enhancements to Google Search with MultiSearch and Multiseach near me. The event also saw announcements for new hardware devices like Pixel 6a, Pixel Buds Pro, and Pixel Watch, as well as updates to Android development tools like Jetpack, Room 2.4.2, and Compose 1.2 beta. Additionally, Google introduced Firebase Extensions Events, Flutter 3, and improvements to Flutter plugins and Crashlytics. The event was made free for anyone to attend, with replays available on-demand at Google's website.

To deploy a Flutter Web app to Amazon S3 and Bitrise, you need to create an Amazon S3 bucket and configure it as a static web site. You can use the AWS Free Tier to get started with 5GB of storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put, Copy, Post, or List Requests. Once you've created your S3 bucket, you can host a static website by creating an index document and enabling static website hosting. To deploy your Flutter Web app to Amazon S3 via Bitrise, you need to add the AWS Access Key and Private Key as secret environment variables, add a Flutter Step to build the web application, and add an Amazon S3 Bucket Sync step to upload the local folder to the S3 bucket. After triggering the build, you can refresh the S3 bucket and click on the index.html page to see your app deployed. Additionally, you can use Amazon CloudFront to serve HTTPS requests for your Amazon S3 bucket if you want to use HTTPS.

Meet Lily, a Business Development Representative at Bitrise, a mobile-specific CI/CD platform. Lily's background in business administration led her to join the fast-paced and dynamic environment of start-ups, where she grew with a reputable value proposition. She was drawn to Bitrise because it represented a product that meant so much to the market, and the company's culture of collaboration, feedback, and knowledge sharing aligns with her values. Lily is inspired by her colleagues and the impact of their work on the mobile application development market, particularly through the platform's ability to solve burdens for users and bring significant ROI. Through her experience at Bitrise, she has learned valuable skills such as curiosity, proactive questioning, and collaboration, which are essential for success in the role. Lily learns most by doing and finds that hands-on experience is the best way to gain knowledge and develop skills. Her passion lies not only in sales but also in advocating for human rights and working with NGOs or within communities, representing a potential alternative career path if she weren't at Bitrise.

The Manage iOS Code Signing Step in Bitrise allows for automatic code signing and exporting of Flutter iOS apps by managing provisioning profiles and certificates. To use this step, one must first upload the necessary code signing certificates to Bitrise, connect their Apple Developer Portal account, and then configure the workflow to include the Manage iOS Code Signing Step, Flutter Build Step, and Export iOS and tvOS Xcode Archive Step. The Manage iOS Code Signing Step downloads and installs certificates, generates and updates provisioning profiles, verifies and registers bundle IDs on the Apple Developer Site, and registers iOS devices with the developer site. The Flutter Build Step builds and signs a Flutter iOS app using the assets downloaded and installed in the previous step, while the Export iOS and tvOS Xcode Archive Step exports an .ipa file from an existing iOS .xcarchive file created by the Flutter Build Step. Once the workflow is configured, one can start a new build and view the output artifacts to verify successful code signing and exporting of the Flutter iOS app.

The automation built upon Terraform Cloud enables teams to manage their infrastructure resources in a self-served way by creating systems, which are cohesive groups of services with shared ownership. To achieve this, the internal platform team set up automation using Terraform, on Terraform Cloud, and leveraged tools like GCP projects, Kubernetes clusters, and ArgoCD for continuous deployment. The system's infrastructure resources are managed through Terraform workspaces, which execute teams' Terraform code to create and manage resources in a secure and independent way. The platform uses GitHub repositories, monorepos, and sensitive environment variables to securely share credentials and access rights among team members and service accounts running their services on Kubernetes clusters. This automation enables true self-service for teams, allowing them to manage only their own resources without relying on the internal platform team.

This tutorial guides you through creating a simple Flutter app with web support and deploying it on Firebase Hosting using the Firebase CLI locally and Bitrise CI/CD pipelines. You'll learn about Flutter, an open-source framework for building multi-platform applications from a single codebase, and Firebase, a platform for developing mobile and web applications by Google. The tutorial covers how to deploy a single-page web app or a Flutter web app with Firebase Hosting, which provides infrastructure, tooling, and features for deploying and managing websites and apps. You'll learn how to add Firebase to your Flutter app, create a Firebase project, initialize the Firebase project, and deploy the project to Firebase Hosting using the Firebase CLI locally and Bitrise CI/CD pipelines.