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Compile and package an Android application

Using Codefresh pipelines

Android applications are using 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.