Not too long ago, I received an email from Google Play, letting me know that from the 1st of August 2019, they would be requiring me to upload 64-bit versions of my apps if I wished to update my apps.
In a panic I reached for the nearest search engine and frantically typed in Flutter build android 64-bit and went down the rabbit hole.
At some point I found articles saying that there is a new preferred format to submit Android Apps to the Play Store, AAB or Android App Bundle. This format came with a few improvements:
- Faster Build times
- Smaller App size
- No longer need to maintain multiple APKs
Continuous Integration
In my previous article about setting up a CI CD pipeline for building a Flutter app and having it be deployed to the Play Store , I used this Azure Devops Marketplace extension: aloisdeniel.flutter. Thankfully the extension has been receiving updates and you can go check out it's github here. But the updates were not coming fast enough for my liking.
At the time of writing a github user, Tregan, has a pull request that would add AAB support to the Flutter extension, but since the pull request hasn't been merged, none of us can use the feature.
So I forked the repository and created an Azure Devops Marketplace extension: Flutter (AAB support). This extension is almost the same as aloisdeniel.flutter with the exception that it contains the AAB feature built by Tregan.
Downside
Using my Azure Devops Marketplace extension you will be able to generate a Android App Bundle, unfortunately at the time of writing the Devops task to Publish to the Google Play Store ms-vsclient.google-play does not allow for AAB files to be uploaded 😥. So you the uploading of your App to the Play Store will have to be a manual task for now 😞.
There is an issue open on github asking for this feature to be added, although it is (at the time of writing) over 14 months old. I don't have the energy or motivation to add this feature, but I have hope that someone will 😅
Conclusion
There are many ways to have your Flutter App build and deploy to the Play Store automatically, I may look into some of the alternatives to Azure Devops when I find the time. But for now I am happy with what Azure Devops has to offer.
Some alternatives for Flutter CI CD:
