get_new_build_number plugin

I've often found myself wanting to just assign new build number to my apps. This simple task turns out to be harder that it seems at first. There's a production build number (on App Store and Google Play), you might also have separate build numbers for beta, alpha, and other versions of your app.

Fortunately, all of these services provide fastlane actions to get the latest build number.

Unfortunately, every service provides app's build number in a bit different format, which makes it not-so-straightforward to get the latest-latest version number.

This is my take at automating this.

Supported services:

• App Store (via app_store_build_number)
• TestFlight (via latest_testflight_build_number)
• Google Play (via google_play_track_version_codes)
• Firebase App Distribution (via firebase_app_distribution_get_latest_release)
• App Center (via appcenter_fetch_version_number)

The latest build number is persisted in $TMPDIR/latest_build_number.txt, so you can use it across fastlane invocations. For example, you could safely do:

$ cd ios && bundle exec fastlane prod && cd ..
$ cd android && bundle exec fastlane prod && cd ..
$ cd symbian && bundle exec fastlane prod && cd .. # lol

The first fastlane invocation retrieves the latest build number. Then, the 2 subsequent invocations simply reuse the latest build number from the file.

The new build number is derived using this complex forumla:

new_build_number = latest_build_number + 1

Simple use case. This will only take the latest version from Google Play. This might not seem very useful at first, but is is when you have different version codes for different tracks (production, beta, alpha, internal).

Let's say that your Play Console looks like this:

• production is at version code 60
• beta is at version code 61
• alpha is at 2 version codes: 64 and 65 (becasue you're doing some fancy testing)

In this case, get_new_build_number action would return 66 (because it is newer/higher/bigger than all the other build numbers).

# android/fastlane/Fastfile

default_platform(:android)

platform :android do
  desc "Deploy a new beta version to Google Play"
  lane :beta do
    build_number = get_new_build_number(
      package_name: ENV["APP_PACKAGE_NAME"], # e.g com.example.yourapp
      google_play_json_key_path: ENV["GOOGLE_PLAY_JSON_KEY_PATH"], # path to JSON key for authenticating with Google Play Android Developer API
    ).to_s

    build_android_app(
      task: "bundleRelease",
      project_dir: "..",
      properties: {
        "android.injected.version.code" => build_number,
      },
    )

    upload_to_play_store(
      track: "beta",
      aab: "./build/outputs/bundle/release/android-release.aab",
      json_key: ENV["GOOGLE_PLAY_JSON_KEY_PATH"],
    )
  end
end

If you provide more parameters, the plugin will take them into account. For example, if you pass bundle_identifier to get_new_build_number:

platform :android do
  desc "Deploy a new beta version to Google Play"
  lane :beta do
    build_number = get_new_build_number(
      bundle_identifier: ENV["APP_BUNDLE_ID"], # e.g com.example.yourApp
      package_name: ENV["APP_PACKAGE_NAME"], # e.g com.example.yourapp
      google_play_json_key_path: ENV["GOOGLE_PLAY_JSON_KEY_PATH"], # path to JSON key for authenticating with Google Play Android Developer API
    ).to_s

    build_android_app(
      task: "bundleRelease",
      project_dir: "..",
      properties: {
        "android.injected.version.code" => build_number,
      },
    )

    upload_to_play_store(
      track: "beta",
      aab: "./build/outputs/bundle/release/android-release.aab",
      json_key: ENV["GOOGLE_PLAY_JSON_KEY_PATH"],
    )
  end
end

then also build numbers in App Store will be taken into account.

Building on the previous example, let's say that your Play Console looks like this (same as before):

• production is at version code 60
• beta is at version code 61
• alpha is at 2 version codes: 64 and 65 (becasue you're doing some fancy testing)

And let's say that you App Store looks like this:

• production is live at version code 81

In this case, get_new_build_number action would return 82 (because it is newer/higher/bigger than all the other build numbers). Of course, you have to be authenticated to App Store using app_store_connect_api_key.

This makes it easy to keep version codes in sync in your app across different app stores.

Please note that this action is simple and has no protection against concurrent builds. Is is probably unsafe to use in an environment when many releases happen in a short time frame.

This project is a fastlane plugin. To get started with fastlane-plugin-get_new_build_number, add it to your project by running:

fastlane add_plugin get_new_build_number

Retrieves the new build number for your app.

This plugin provides a single action, get_new_build_number. For now, see source code to learn how to use it. I might write some docs later.

Check out the example Fastfile to see how to use this plugin. Try it by cloning the repo, running fastlane install_plugins and bundle exec fastlane test.

Note to author: Please set up a sample project to make it easy for users to explore what your plugin does. Provide everything that is necessary to try out the plugin in this project (including a sample Xcode/Android project if necessary)

To run both the tests, and code style validation, run

rake

To automatically fix many of the styling issues, use

rubocop -a

For any other issues and feedback about this plugin, please submit it to this repository.

If you have trouble using plugins, check out the Plugins Troubleshooting guide.