December 2022 Summaries

Here's a 1-paragraph summary of the text: Working with React Native apps introduces challenges such as deployment and release processes, which can be addressed by introducing Mobile DevOps best practices into processes and tooling. Automation is key to tackling these challenges, and adopting Mobile DevOps involves six stages: measuring, CI/CD strategy, building, testing, releasing, and monitoring. Implementing Mobile DevOps processes and designing CI/CD workflows can help build, test, sign, release, and monitor React Native apps in a more efficient manner, using tools such as Pipelines and fastlane to configure automated tasks, and considering the benefits of cloud-based CI/CD services, which offer easy project setup, customizable workflows, seamless code signing, and pay-as-you-go pricing.

The mobile testing pyramid is a guiding principle for planning manual and automated mobile tests, breaking down testing into three layers: unit tests at the bottom, integration tests above them, and end-to-end tests at the top. To properly set up an environment for end-to-end testing, developers must automate their app processes, distinguish between automating their app and automating their testing, and build a proper E2E testing strategy that mirrors the user experience and doesn't get caught up in implementation details. Mastering the mobile testing pyramid helps create better apps, balance costs and time, and establish test coverage of the code base.

Mustafa, a former Apple employee, joined Bitrise as a Customer Success Manager (CSM) where he contributes to his career journey by gaining deeper insights into technology and enhancing ambiguity skills. Mustafa's experience has taught him that it's okay to fail, and he emphasizes the importance of building strong relationships with clients and colleagues, treating them as people first, and being mindful of their needs. He attributes his excitement about working at Bitrise to its positive culture, opportunities for growth, and feeling like he's on a rocket ship. Mustafa values hands-on learning, believes that time is valuable, and encourages aspiring Risers to ask how their clients' day is going and see how they're doing in life.

The key to building scalable mobile applications, according to Scott Campagna of FIS, lies in creating a solid foundation for your application by leveraging common skillsets and frameworks, automating infrastructure, and implementing modular pipelines that enable fast and efficient feature updates. By adopting automation tools like Bitrise, the team was able to streamline their workflow, reduce manual errors, and improve the overall developer experience, ultimately leading to better app quality and reduced issues for end users.

Maestro is a new open-source mobile UI testing framework developed by Mobile.dev that allows developers to easily define and test their flows using YAML files. It's built on learnings from predecessors like Appium, Espresso, and UIAutomator, and accommodates the unstable nature of mobile apps and devices. Maestro has features such as flakiness tolerance, automatic waiting for loading content, interpreted tests, and support for native and cross-platform mobile platforms. To get started with Maestro, developers can install it on their machines using the CLI, and then create a flow YAML file to define their test flows. The framework also supports integration with CI/CD pipelines, cloud testing, and parallel test execution. Additionally, Maestro has been integrated with Bitrise, allowing developers to run tests as part of their mobile app development workflows.

We have revamped Insights based on customer feedback and to make space for other planned new features. To celebrate this, we are giving away all Insights features for free until the end of March 2023. Help us to improve Bitrise Insights further by giving feedback about it in the product. Bitrise Insights is a service that helps teams monitor their build, test, and credit data, and find bottlenecks and improvement opportunities in mobile app build and test processes. It aims to increase process efficiency, reduce wait time, and help teams make more informed decisions through data-driven insights. The revamped Insights features include a new site structure with a left navigation sidebar for quick access, CI/CD Health Overview for aggregated metrics, and Bottlenecks analysis to identify areas of optimization. To celebrate the update, all Insights features are available for free until March 2023, inviting customers to provide feedback on the product.

The Bitrise CLI has been updated to version 2.0.0, which includes changes such as the removal of the --loglevel command line parameter, an experimental feature for structured logging in json format, and small improvements to debugging capabilities. To install or upgrade the Bitrise CLI, users can follow specific instructions, including using a custom folder path on M1 machines. The new version provides enhanced functionality while maintaining backward compatibility with previous versions.