Wikimedia Apps/Team/Android/Release process

This page documents the release process for the Mobile Apps Team.

Alpha releases
Alpha apks are built automatically after patches get merged to master on the half hour mark and are available at android-builds.wmflabs.org.

Beta releases
Beta releases get pushed to the store more often and earlier than production releases. Therefore, we bump the version code usually before we build a beta release (but not usually for production).
 * 1) Bump version code
 * 2) +2 in Gerrit
 * 3) Build apk:
 * 4) Test the apk. Install it via  . The   option is useful when testing the upgrade path since it doesn't clear the data.
 * 5) Copy the apk and the mapping.tar.gz files to releases.wikimedia.org:
 * 6) Confirm the copy step worked:
 * 7) Publish the apk on Google Play Publisher.
 * 8) When publishing you want to update the What's New section. You can use this command to compile a list of changes in Git since the last beta release:
 * 9) Push the release tag to gerrit remote:
 * 10) Email mobile-l about the release.
 * 11) Wait ~2 hours and then see the live update in Google Play Store.
 * 1) Email mobile-l about the release.
 * 2) Wait ~2 hours and then see the live update in Google Play Store.

Production releases

 * 1) Make sure you have checked out to the correct commit in Git. Usually that is where the latest beta release is, but there can be exceptions.
 * 2) Build apk:   This will produce two apks:   for uploading to Google Play, and   for uploading to releases.wikimedia.org.
 * 3) Test the apks. Install them via.
 * 4) Copy the apk and the mapping.tar.gz files of releasesprod to releases.wikimedia.org:
 * 5) Confirm the copy step worked:
 * 6) Publish the "r" apk on Google Play Publisher.
 * 7) When publishing you want to update the What's New section. You can use this command to compile a list of changes in Git since the last production release (Note that it's slightly different than for beta):
 * 8) Push the release tag to gerrit remote:
 * 9) Add an entry to the app release history.
 * 10) PM emails mobile-l.
 * 11) Wait ~2 hours and then see the live update in Google Play Store.

Custom releases
Custom releases are done by the partners team. For custom releases there are two options: The process is pretty much the same for both options, except when building the apk.
 * Custom channel
 * Custom channel + custom application ID
 * This acts like a different app, so it can be installed side by side with our production Wikipedia app.
 * 1) Make sure you have checked out to the correct commit in Git. Usually that is where the latest production release is, but there can be exceptions.
 * 2) Build apk:
 * 3) * Custom channel:
 * 4) * Custom channel + custom application ID:
 * 5) ** The application ID will be
 * 6) Test the apk. Install it via.
 * 7) If needed, copy the file to a subfolder in releases.wikimedia.org:
 * 8) Push the release tag to gerrit remote: