February 2023 Summaries

Mobile app development build times are crucial to ensure productivity and efficiency in the development process. Slow builds can lead to wasted time, delayed releases, and a negative impact on developer productivity. To monitor and optimize slow mobile builds, developers can use Bitrise Insights to track build times, identify bottlenecks, and improve their workflow. By analyzing successful build time charts, exploring builds, and identifying bottlenecks, developers can reduce wait times, increase productivity, and streamline their development process.

As of today, Bitrise is offering M1 Max Studio to users that want to further strengthen their raw computing speed, providing fully managed Apple silicon hardware to achieve mobile build performance gains. This new machine allows developers to run complex and resource-heavy build logs in a fraction of the time previously required. By eliminating machine memory constraints, customers have seen significant improvements in green build times, with 20-37% p50 improvements reported through closed beta testing. For users interested in making the switch, Bitrise offers various M1 Max Studio machines, including different stack options and a new tiered offering of M1 machine types, which can provide up to 70% faster processing speeds compared to Intel Elite XL machines. With this upgrade, developers can enjoy improved performance, streamlined software updates, and increased efficiency in their mobile build workflows.

We're introducing a new tiered offering of M1 machine type options to better suit your needs, as our users' build requirements have changed over time. The new tiers include M1 and M1 Max Medium and Large machine types with improved value for memory and build needs. Our Apple Silicon M1 machines offer powerful, efficient, and flexible platforms for building and coding on mobile devices, providing better value than Intel machines. With the switch to Apple Silicon, users can expect faster build times and improved computing speed, making it the obvious choice for those looking to upgrade their technology game.

The focus of mobile development is shifting towards mobile app development with a growing emphasis on Mobile DevOps and continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). The boundaries of Mobile DevOps automation are extending beyond mobile CI/CD pipelines, leading to the emergence of new practices such as DevSecOps. In 2023, companies can expect to see a rise in shift-left security and DevSecOps, which involves incorporating security measures earlier in the development process. Cross-platform development is expected to become more popular due to rising costs of native app development, with hybrid development being a cost-effective way to develop mobile apps. Mobile DevOps engineers are becoming increasingly important as companies look to optimize build pipelines and streamline development practices. AI tools, such as AIOps, are also emerging as a key trend in mobile app development, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to automate tasks and improve service quality. Additionally, continuous delivery and release orchestration will become increasingly important to reduce costs, improve reliability, and increase the speed of releases.

Bitrise has officially launched key-based caching for users on credit or trial plans, as well as those using private cloud, after months of beta testing. Key-based caching allows users to have more explicit control over what is cached, share a cache across workflows and branches, and automatically invalidate stale cache files. This feature utilizes a key-value approach to store build artifacts and dependencies, significantly improving the speed and efficiency of builds by reducing download and installation times for developers. With positive feedback from major brands in the mobile development industry, key-based caching offers finer controls over setting up cache rules, sharing across workflows and branches, and restoring cache entries, resulting in speed improvements of 27-51% when running tests on popular open-source apps. The feature is now available with a set storage allowance included, with new pricing plans to be launched soon. To use key-based caching, users simply add two Steps - Save Cache and Restore Cache - to their workflow, and can easily manage and monitor their cache from within the Bitrise platform.

In 2022, Bitrise continued to develop new features to help mobile developers speed up their workflows and improve their build performance. The company acquired Flare.Build to enhance feedback loops, introduced a new Build Pipeline feature, and improved its support for Apple Silicon machines. Additionally, Bitrise Insights was revamped with new features and made available for free until the end of March 2023. The platform saw a significant increase in user engagement, with a total build time of 5,271,451 hours, indicating that developers were utilizing the platform more than ever before. The company also analyzed behavioral data from its users to identify trends and areas for improvement, including the most common mobile development practices and testing methods. Furthermore, Bitrise conducted a MODAS survey to provide insights into modern mobile end-to-end DevOps practices, which revealed that larger companies tend to have more robust testing practices than smaller ones. Overall, 2022 was a year of significant growth and innovation for Bitrise, with the company continuing to prioritize its mission of helping developers build high-quality apps faster and more efficiently.

Bitrise's caching solution is designed to increase build speed by optimizing workflow efficiency. The company has introduced two main methods of caching: branch-based caching, which will be sunsetted in 2023, and dependency caching. Dependency caching uses key-based caching, where cache archives are associated with a key, allowing for the restoration of cached archives during workflows and saving build files into a cache archive at the end of the workflow. This method can be implemented by adding Restore Cache and Save Cache steps to workflows and using template elements such as checksum and getenv functions to create unique keys. Caching can also be used to optimize build artifacts, and Bitrise provides out-of-the-box automation Steps for popular build tools like Gradle, Bazel, and Tuist. Troubleshooting cache issues involves inspecting build logs and using the App settings to view current cache entries and download cache archives. Additionally, generic steps can be used to customize caching behavior, and steps can be skipped based on conditions such as PR builds or environment variables.

Bitrise Pipelines, a feature that runs individual workflows in parallel, is now available on all plans for Bitrise users in beta. This change introduces a new UI that captures builds and build details within a workflow, providing an easy-to-understand dashboard with features such as pipeline details, visibility into running pipelines, and a simplified way to understand when pipelines are finished. With Build Pipelines, users can expect parallel builds, test-sharding, and partial re-run capabilities, allowing them to run tests in parallel, reuse artifacts, and quickly identify failed steps, ultimately saving developer time, productivity, and money. The feature can be set up using the bitrise.yml editor without any extra steps or maintenance.

Mobile app development teams use various types of testing, including unit testing, integration testing, and user interface testing. To track changes in mobile apps, teams should document and monitor test results with test reports. Test reports summarize all test activities and final test results, helping stakeholders evaluate the quality of a tested product and determine whether it's ready for release. On Bitrise, teams can generate HTML test reports using a Test Report add-on that exports test results in .xcresult or JUnit XML format. To do this, developers can use jest and jest-html-reporter with a React Native application, adding a Script Step to copy the HTML report to the Deploy to Bitrise.io Step. The final workflow should display the HTML report in the Artifacts tab, allowing stakeholders to view test results and make informed decisions about product release.

We're excited to announce a new feature—build log grouping—that will greatly improve the way mobile app developers build, test, and deploy their apps on our platform. This update streamlines the build log process by grouping logs by Steps, making it easier to understand why a build failed and at which Step the failure occurred. Before this change, build logs were lengthy and difficult to navigate, causing frustration among developers. The new feature provides a collapsed summary of finished builds, hiding irrelevant successful Step logs, and immediately displaying the failing Step's log, facilitating error identification. Additionally, it offers information on Steps and their timing, helping developers identify bottlenecks in the build process.