Supporting more platforms, devices and adding features to your framework or app and its codebase will enlarge in the complexity, making it difficult for ensuring quality. Continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) is the most broadly acquired method of ensuring quality applications. There is a basic variation between mobile application platforms and the world wide web such as iOS and Android. So integrating CI/CD for mobile app test automation may include various setups.
This guide will direct the various modes a mobile application developer can acquire to achieve continuous testing, integration, and deployment workflow.
The logic behind applying CI/CD for mobile applications is to automate the deployment functionality and core integration. CI/CD has been improved in the domain of web deployment. You can create a CI/CD pipeline for mobile applications, and see one tiny hiccup that has protected the full automation of mobile application tests.
Breaking the crucial chunks of the process:
Automated testing
This is a location for fastly advancing technology where the latest and best solutions are outcoming. More usual steps are being automated with enhancing reliability and precision. Various platforms like pCloudy with their real device cloud allows automation and cloud-based manual testing through the ability for in-depth use-case-specific analysis and broad integration options.
Continuous integration
This is the procedure of combining the code contributions and development efforts on the shared code repository into a semi-automated workflow. It may also conclude by activating test scripts or other post-build activities and building your app binaries.
Continuous deployment/delivery
Due to the nature of mobile app distribution, it is not possible to self-operate the deployment part in all scenarios completely. Based on the business use case and the platform, an application can be divided into various methods.
Apps stores have been one of the most public and popular ways of delivering applications. Suggesting apps to the app store has been a physical process concluding the usual verification steps. This requires manual intervention and here the delivery part can not be automated.
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The Advantages of CI/CD mobile app testing
There is no point of automating the mobile app CI/CD pipeline unless there is good quality testing and approval workflow built alongside. Executing CI/CD with the help of automated testing delivers many benefits over standard workflows.
- When positioning up a CI/CD pipeline, you will spontaneously have to analyze if the critical element of the development procedure is solidly united and well-defined.
- It permits solid integration of the development teams with testing teams. Mainly when a contribution is delivered upstream, every team member is informed, and various important procedures are triggered-it helps in introducing accountability and clarity in an earlier unclear and slow process.
- It is helpful in reducing time. Quick upgrade cycles make it simple for improving product release velocity.
- CI/CD merged with automated testing is helpful in presenting strong quality assurance and creating approval standards in your workflow. Due to these procedures and the continuous testing tool being pretty featureful and flexible, you will get alternatives for extending features for tasks such as logging, bug tracking, and reporting.
- It permits process enhancement. Once a workflow is denied and visualized rightly, it will be helpful for you to study performance, CPU resource consumption, security features, memory usage, etc. And promote accordingly.
Continuous delivery
The turnover side for continuous delivery (CD) is continuous integration (CI). Needless to say, automated testing is also an important factor for developing good quality apps, it does not exchange the hands-on manual testing experience you get from team testers and members. When Xcode cloud tests a change to your code(CI), it can automatically provide (CD) a latest version of your app for internal testers with the help of TestFlight.
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Elements leading setups for CI-CD mobile applications
The beginning and the most crucial part of the app development life cycle may be the programming language/paradigm adopted by the development team.
Development methodology
Developing mobile applications is a work that needs platform-specific programming experience and great knowledge of the present ecosystem. Some usual trends can be helpful in analyzing and categorizing Android and iOS-based mobile applications:
Hybrid application
Building hybrid apps requires using CSS, HTML, and JavaScript for building a mobile-friendly responsive application.
Native development
For Android apps, Kotlin/java, and android studio are used for developing an application. For iOS apps, Xcode and Swift are used, objective C++ for writing apps.
Progressive web apps
This method includes enveloping a web application into a discharge native file.
Cross-platform development
With the help of cross-platform development like react, native and Flutter, we can build apps for both iOS platforms and Android using a single code base.
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Deployment strategy
Based on the tool used for building a mobile application, there may be different approaches for releasing the app to the market.
AppStore
Fixing the app from the store, which is a section of the mobile device’s operating system. It may be a third-party app store.
App wrapping
Providing hybrid or fully web-based apps under a native wrapper delivers the capacity for upgrading the app wholly or in part without updating the binary.
Binaries
Application binaries such as .ipa for iOS and Android .apk file applications can be delivered and installed separately.
Web application
Providing a mobile-friendly responsive web application through web hosts, DNS, and cloud servers.
Testing strategy
The most popular method of testing both iOS and Android applications:
Manual app testing
Various testers may have various focus areas, depending on the app being tested, the type of testing being performed, and other elements, some manual ways of testing app testing online or mobile app test automation has used an emulator or simulator, running tests on a physical device, or with the help of a cloud-based testing service.
Native testing tools
Xcode delivers similar functions for testing iOS apps, including a built-in simulator, support for running tests on physical devices, and a habit of continuous testing tool for profiling and debugging apps.
Automated testing
There are various ways of performing cloud-based automation testing on iOS and Android apps. The correct way for implementing CI CD for mobile apps is with the help of pCloudy, which delivers a cloud-based platform for running automated tests.
Conclusion
The deployment of self-hosted CI/CD solutions necessitates the ownership of hardware and the establishment of infrastructure, which in turn leads to significant maintenance efforts. In contrast, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions offer hassle-free cross-platform capabilities, eliminating the need for maintenance. These cloud-based CI/CD tools are effortless to set up, as the service provider handles all hardware and software maintenance.
This alleviates developers from engaging in laborious and repetitive tasks, such as code signing and publishing. Moreover, cloud-based CI/CD tools present a notable advantage by unifying the entire team on a single platform, enabling iOS, Android, and web developers to collaborate seamlessly within a consistent toolset. Happy Testing!
