Automation and CI in Xamarin Projects

Alan Grgic

@spellgrgicright

tools and technologies for software quality

= Thing you can click!

A Little About Me

Create

Build

Test

Distribute / Monitor

As mobile developers, we want tools that allow us to easily...

DevOps

Automation

"When I have a tough job in the plant and can’t find an easy way to do it, I have a lazy man put on it. He’ll find an easy way."
 

- Clarence Bleicher, Chrysler Corporation, 1947 

Xamarin DevOps Toolchest

Create

Build

Test

Distribute

Xamarin.iOS

Xamarin.Droid

Xamarin.Forms

Jenkins

VSTS

TeamCity

Bitrise

Xamarin.UWP

Xamarin.UITest

NuGet

yeoman

NUnit

xUnit

App Store

Google Play

Windows Store

MAM Solutions

TestFlight

Fastlane

HockeyApp

Visual Studio Mobile Center

Artifactory

​CORE

​BONUS

Xamarin TestCloud

jobdsl

AppVeyor

Continuous Integration

Getting Started With...

Jenkins

TeamCity

VSTS

Bitrise

AppVeyor

Everyone's CI Needs Are Different

Lots of options and choices to consider...

Open Source or Proprietary?

SaaS or On-Premise?

Budget constraints

Operating system requirements

Integration with existing tools

...and that's not a problem!

Jenkins Overview

Everyone's CI Needs Are Different

...and that's kind of a problem :-(

• There is no one "Master Job config" that will build everything
   
• Build configurations can change over time, sometimes institutionally
   
• New branch? New job.
   
• Things are similar enough to require copying and pasting a lot...
   
• But different enough that you can't just copy / paste whole jobs
   
• CI tool UIs can be cumbersome  seriously the worst omg to work with

Jenkins JobDSL

Build Definitions as Code!

Setting up a Job that manages a Job

Understanding JobDSL Flow

Jenkins JobDSL

seed file example

 custom Groovy or Java can be used to extend JobDSL! 

JobDSL Architecture

Hooray, CI is set up!

...so we're good, right?

Not so fast...

Don't let this be you!

Beyond Building

• I hate setting up the same code over and over
   
• I want to keep my app's version numbers in check
   
• I want to revert to a prior build when a serious issue is found
   
• I hate the Apple Developer Portal and want to forget it exists
   
• I want to publish my app somewhere so it can be manually tested

Besides compiling and unit testing, what else can we automate?

Yeoman

• App scaffolding / templating system
   
• Creates useful starting points for different types of apps
   
• Helps encourage use of best practices
   
• Saves time on initial configuration / dependencies setup
   
• Lots of user-submitted templates at http://yeoman.io/generators/

Yeoman Project Templating

We can go beyond just generic starting points!

Templating can be particularly useful when:

• Apps share common custom components
• Apps are similar except for configuration

Many organizations want separate apps that perform very similar functions.

    e.g. : Website wrappers, report viewers, SharePoint list viewers

Versioning Apps

Versioning Apps

not hard, but harder than it should be

Android

Versioning Apps

not hard, but harder than it should be

iOS

Versioning Apps

Internal

Public

No iOS App Store!

App Store submission required, so version number* might have to stay the same across multiple builds

*aka release number, aka CFBundleVersion

Automate all version fields based on CI build number

Decide and hard code version number* in advance each release

Automate versionCode and CFBundleVersionShortString based on CI build number

Automating App Versioning

• Use your CI system's BUILD_NUMBER (or equivalent) environment variable in  your build scripts to set version numbers before compiling
   
• For Android:
  •  edit AndroidManifest.xml
  •  use the "XmlPoke" MSBuild Task
     
• For iOS:
  • edit Info.plist
  • use PListBuddy (included with macOS):

<XmlPoke XmlInputPath="$(AndroidManifestPath)"
Namespaces="<Namespace Prefix='android'
Uri='http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android' />"
Query="manifest/@android:versionCode"
Value="$(BUILD_NUMBER)"/>

$ PListBuddy -c "Set :CFBundleVersion '1.0.$BUILD_NUMBER'" "/path/to/Info.plist"

Recovering from a Bad Deployment

Isn't Source Control Good Enough?

Do you tag/label your releases in source control?

If not, good luck finding your previous release!

Build machines never change, right?

Could you recover an old build after a major OS update?

Artifactory

• Software binary repository
   
• Plugin support for many CI systems
   
• Store the result of every build
   
• Easily tie binaries back to:
  • Job runs
  • Source control locations
  • Changesets

Provisioning Profiles

A huge pain in the iOS

ERROR

A Vicious Cycle

Fastlane

• Huge open source project
   
• Command line and Ruby SDK
   
• Renew certs and profiles every build
   
• Automate entire build/submit process
   
• Lots of community-developed plugins
   
• Features being added constantly

Manual Testing

"If you automate a mess, you get an automated mess."
 

- Rod Michael

 Director of Customer E-Business, Rockwell Automation 

HockeyApp

• Private App Store for beta testing
   
• Invite users to download & install
   
• Notify users of changes mid-cycle
   
• Collect user feedback
   
• Browse crash reports 

Bringing it all Together...

By our Powers Combined

Automation and CI in Xamarin Projects

Alan Grgic

@spellgrgicright

Thanks!

= Thing you can click!