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Compile and package an Android application

Using Codefresh pipelines

Android applications use Java/Gradle for their build system. Because Codefresh already supports Gradle, it is also very easy to build Android projects.

Any Gradle command can run inside a Docker image that contains the Android SDK. As an example, we will use a Nextcloud image from Dockerhub.

The example project

You can see the example project at https://github.com/codefresh-contrib/android-sample-app. The repository contains a Hello World Android project with the following tasks:

  • ./gradlew test runs unit tests
  • ./gradlew build builds the application

Create a CI pipeline that compiles/releases Android

In most cases you would create a similar pipeline to a Gradle project.

Building and Testing an Android app

Building and Testing an Android app

Here is the full pipeline that uses a Docker image with the Android SDK in order to run Gradle.

codefresh.yml

version: '1.0'
stages:
  - prepare
  - test
  - build
steps:
  main_clone:
    title: Cloning main repository...
    stage: prepare
    type: git-clone
    repo: 'codefresh-contrib/android-sample-app'
    revision: master
    git: github
  TestIt:
    title: Running Tests
    stage: test
    image: nextcloudci/android:android-48
    commands:
     - chmod +x ./gradlew
     - ./gradlew test --no-daemon --gradle-user-home=/codefresh/volume/.gradle
  BuildIt:
    title: Packaging Android App
    stage: build
    image: nextcloudci/android:android-48
    commands:
     - ./gradlew build  --no-daemon --gradle-user-home=/codefresh/volume/.gradle

This pipeline clones the source code, runs unit tests and finally builds the Android application.

Codefresh is smart enough that caches automatically for us the workspace of a build (/codefresh/volume). This works great for build tools that keep their cache in the project folder, but not for Maven/Gradle which keep their cache externally. By changing the location of the Gradle cache we make sure that Codefresh will cache automatically the Gradle libraries resulting in much faster builds.

Codefresh YAML for pipeline definitions
Steps in pipelines
Creating pipelines
How Codefresh pipelines work