A Guide to Continuous Delivery on iOS With Fastlane and Firebase

In this article, we’ll learn about continuous delivery and its implementation in the iOS ecosystem.

Continuous Delivery (CD) is the process of automating the build using some external tools/software, which reduces manual developer effort to create the build so you can share the build reliably in no time.

Normally, Continuous Integration (CI) is also implemented with CD, but it’s not compulsory to implement both at the same time.

In CI, the developer’s code is merged continuously, to maintain the latest deployable code all the time. CD is as effective for a sole-developer as for large teams, as you have to share/deploy the build.

So, in this article, we will focus on implementing continuous delivery for the iOS platform using Fastlane and Firebase for sharing the beta build with testers/clients.

Here are some typical tasks we repeat every time we share a build.

1. Build the app in different environments (staging/production).

2. Signing the builds according to specified environments.

3. Exporting the app and manually configure the settings for the build.

4. Uploading it to distribution platforms (like Diawi, TestFlight, Crashlytics).

5. Share installable build links with release notes (in some cases).
   

With continuous delivery, you can automate all the above steps.

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