mariasimoneau
commented
7 years ago Hi Josh -- Thanks for writing this up. It did get confusing since this was our first time with the staging server.
So, effectively, there's no more debug version of the released app which I'm fine with.
And, the "debug" version is more importantly the "beta test" version with debug turned on. By "beta test" I mean it's a new build of the app that we're testing against the staging server. I personally thing beta is a clearer term for this version and it can be understood that the beta version always has debug turned on.
I have one request to add to this. I would like a 3rd version of the app that points to studies.beiwe.org that is our "release candidate". Eli came up with this "release candidate" term last June and I found it very helpful. I never like to release anything without giving it a sanity test. While you may see the release version simply as the debug version pointing at studies.beiwe.org instead of staging.beiwe.org and with the debug features turned off, we've seen that things get overlooked and/or broken in that simple process so I'd like to test it first. I liked having the release candidate on studies.beiwe.org as it resets our frame of mind from testing to production. However, I'm open to other suggestions such as emailing it.
Lastly, why is there development associated with this? This #13 github item says "We estimate that all the tasks in this GitHub issue will take us about 8 hours." aren't we just discussing how to test and release a new .apk version?
Sorry I'm so late getting back to you on this. It took me awhile to get dug out after vacation, etc., etc. Thanks! Maria
zagorsky
We would like to simplify and standardize the process of releasing versions of the Beiwe Android app.
Limiting the possible app configurations
We would like to have only two build configurations of the app:
Debug, which would point at the staging server (staging.beiwe.org), and would have the debug interface in the app
Release, which would point at the production server (studies.beiwe.org), and would not have the debug interface in the app.
The advantages of this are that it would make communication clearer about which version of the app we're asked to compile, and it would make it easier for us to compile the app version (we could use a dropdown at compile time instead of editing several hard-coded variables).
The downside is that it wouldn't let people test all the possible configurations: you wouldn't have the app debug interface when testing the app on the production server anymore.
Why haven't we suggested this until now? Compiling was pretty straightforward (and this wasn't really worth the investment) before we added the production server: there were only two versions (debug interface and the production). But adding the staging server has created four possible ways of compiling the app, and that's made communication and compiling more complicated.
Production server would only have release app; staging server would only have debug app version
Along with the changes above, we would like the production server's App Download page (studies.beiwe.org/downloads) to only have release apps (pointing to the production server, and without the debug interface) available for download. We'd also like the staging server's App Download page (staging.beiwe.org/downloads) to only have debug apps (pointing to the staging server, and with the debug interface) available for download.
As part of this, we'd like the staging server's app download link staging.beiwe.org/download (which doesn't require a login) to download the most recent version of the debug app.
The App Download page (/downloads) on both servers would also clearly show which app version is then available for download (at the /download link). Hopefully this would reduce the opacity currently surrounding downloading app versions.
The motivation for this is to make it clearer which version of the app you're downloading, and to avoid confusion about apps downloaded from staging that are pointing at production. The downside of this is that anyone who doesn't have login access to staging.beiwe.org wouldn't be able to see the debug apps download page, although they would still be able to download the most recent debug app version from staging.beiwe.org/download without a login.
We would also like to add version numbers to the APK files as part of a standardized filename format like "beiwe_2.1.apk" or "beiwe_debug_2.1.2.apk". Hopefully we can figure out an automated way of doing this, but if that's too complicated, we can do it with a manual procedure.
Josh note to myself:
One idea for updating the changelog: keep a CHANGELOG.md file in the Android repo, and have the backend pull that single static file. This might be a way to do that: http://stackoverflow.com/a/22314262
We estimate that all the tasks in this GitHub issue will take us about 8 hours.