If you are an indie developer working on mobile apps, you have plenty of challenges to look out for on top of creating a great app:
- Keeping the app robust through frequent updates
- Deploying and testing leading to manual (and occasionally error-prone) processes
- Managing deployment to Beta testers
- In multi-developer teams, one developer can make changes that accidentally breaks another’s code
- Once live, you need to monitor the health of your app
Bitrise can help with these and other challenges through the Bitrise CI/CD cloud-based platform and its integrations with other systems and tools.
Getting started
Another challenge for an Indie developer is having to learn so many technologies, and even though CI/CD seems a good idea, what is the learning curve like? Well, this is one of Bitrise’s strengths. Setting up Bitrise CI/CD for your app requires only a few minutes and most of the setup is done automatically for you.
All you need to start building is to connect your source code repository and allow Bitrise to create a webhook (Repo push for example) to trigger the cloud builds. SSH keys are used to keep things secure.
Connect your repo
Choose a branch
Bitrise will auto-detect the project type by examining the code in the repo.
Many types are supported.
Set up a Webhook to trigger a build on events like a push of code to the repo.
So what does this give me out of the box?
By default, you will have to set up Bitrise to run when you push your code to your repository. Bitrise will run a build on your code and your tests and then report the success or failure of your tests in an email to you. This is just the default — you can add much more to this including automatic deployment and integration with other tools or systems.
Can I use the tools I already have set up?
During its automatic configuration, Bitrise identifies the type of project and supports a wide range of both native and cross-platform development languages. Bitrise automatically sets up a build process for the coding language and platform in your repository.
You don’t need to set up any hardware or servers, Bitrise runs in the cloud.
Once it is set up, what else will it give me?
Once you have Bitrise set up and running builds for you, you will start thinking about what other benefits you can gain from your new cloud-based CI/CD system. Bitrise Workflows run as a series of Steps. Bitrise provides over 300 different steps that you can use.
Just to mention a few examples:
- Notifications - Let the team know how things are going with a Discord or Slack message sent from the Bitrise build.
- Automate code quality checks by letting Bitrise run Swiftlint or Android Lint for you.
- Get a QR code for the install page to give to your testers.
- Or how about a bit of fun? Let your LIFX bulb light up to tell you the status of your builds!
All these steps are among the 300+ freely available to add to your Bitrise workflows.
So Indies do need Bitrise
So Indies do benefit from implementing Bitrise, and with such a simple, quick setup to get it running and a free trial or even a free Hobby tier to get you started, there is no reason not to sample the benefits of Bitrise CI/CD for your mobile apps.
How do I start?
Sign up is easy and you can start for free here.
.jpg)
.jpg)
