Continuous Mobile App Delivery

Release management is a major part of our daily work as well as regular app development. Frequent release is essential to survive in this fast-paced industry, which, however, gets harder and harder to manage as the project continues because the specification gets increasingly complicated and business will expand to different countries, which means you need to support more languages. What you need to care about is not only apps for your customers but also internal apps whose audience can be developers, product managers, community managers and QA team.

In this talk, Yusei will share how Cookpad copes with the complexity of release management by covering different topics ranging from basics like how to schedule releases properly to advanced topics like how to leverage ChatOps.

Transcript

1. Continuous
   Mobile App Delivery
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2. Release management is hard
   and keeps getting harder and harder
   As your project continues:
   • The team gets bigger
   • Build time gets longer
   • Your app supports more languages
   • You have more build configurations
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3. Yusei Nishiyama
   @yuseinishiyama
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4. Previous talks and blog posts
   • Building iOS Apps at Scale
   • Continuous App Delivery
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5. Cookpad
   • 40 million monthly average users
   • Available in 70 countries
   • Over 2 million recipes
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6. How we've been developing since 2014
   • The number of iOS Engineers
   • 1 → 12
   • Build Time
   • Nothing (Objective-C) → 20 mins
   • The number of supported languages
   • 1 → 17
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8. Agenda
   • How to schedule release
   • How to automate release (with a Slack bot)
   • Case Study: Cookpad
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9. Release Schedule
   • Frequent
   • Release changes incrementally
   • Consistent
   • It should be usually non-negotiable
   • Independent of the Product development cycle
   • Harness web-based feature toggles1
   1 https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
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10. Weekly Release in Cookpad
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11. Weekly Release in Cookpad
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12. App Versioning
    • Programmatic versioning
    • Auto increment
    • CI build number
    • Version-agnostic code base
    • Translations with a fallback language
    • Applying version info on build time
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13. Tips: Get App Version from Connect
    lane :app_version do |options|
    Spaceship::Tunes.login
    Spaceship::Tunes.select_team
    app = Spaceship::Tunes::Application.find(options[:bundle_id])
    latest_version = app.edit_version || app.live_version
    latest_version.version
    end
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14. Agenda
    • How to schedule release
    • How to automate release
    • Case Study: Cookpad
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15. Remote Build Server
    • Make your builds independent from a specific machine
    environment
    • Keep the history
    • Use Fastlane match2 to provision servers
    2 https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/match/
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16. Tips: Server Provisioning with Fastlane match
    https://codesigning.guide/ 16
    

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17. Targets of App Release
    It's not only your customers
    • A developer, so that they can debug a feature on a real
    device
    • A product manager, so that they can try out a work-in-
    progress feature to confirm that what’s being built is actually
    what is wanted
    • QA team, so that they can test a release candidate
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19. Different Build Configurations
    • The bundle ID can be different so that internal testers can
    have multiple apps installed on their devices
    • The server environment can be different
    • Enabled features can be different
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20. !
    branch + context = build
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21. Tips: Jenkins Parameterised Build3
    http://server/job/myjob/buildWithParameters?
    name1=value1&name2=value2
    3 https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Parameterized+Build
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22. !
    • Who's going to trigger the build?
    • How can we decide what parameters to send?
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23. GitHub Webhooks + Label
    • Specify a PR that needs to be distributed with a GitHub label
    • If CI (Fastlane) founds a specific label it distributes the
    app to internal members with an Enterprise codesign
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24. GitHub Webhooks + Label
    • Specify a PR that needs to be distributed with a GitHub label
    • If CI (Fastlane) founds a specific label it distributes the
    app to internal members with an Enterprise codesign
    • master and branches with an RC prefix are distributed
    automatically
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25. GitHub Webhooks + Label (Failed)
    • CI tends to be busy
    • Too many internal releases
    • People started ignoring them
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26. ChatOps
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27. What's ChatOps?
    ChatOps is the use of chat clients to facilitate software
    development and operational tasks
    — Yusei Nishiyama
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28. Why ChatOps?
    • Transparent
    • Infalliable
    • Intuitive
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29. Bot Version 1
    • Pattern match with regex
    • deploy {branch_name} to
    {destination}
    • Commands are hard to remember
    • Operational mistakes
    • Hard to know available options
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30. Bot Version 2
    • Interactive
    • Prepopulated options
    • Contextual
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31. Architecture
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32. How to Design Your Bot
    Read Message Guidelines4
    • Replace the original message instead
    of making a new one
    • Cleaning up the entire interaction at
    the end to summarize what has
    happened
    • If it consists of multiple steps, those
    steps should be visible only to the user
    until the entire action is completed
    4 For more information check https://api.slack.com/docs/message-guidelines
    and https://github.com/slackapi/sample-message-menus-node
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33. Choose Right Technology
    • Incoming Webhooks
    • Slash Commands
    • Events API
    • RTM (Real-time messaging) API
    • Web API
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34. Receiving Messages
    • Slash Commands
    • Events API
    • RTM (Real-time messaging) API
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35. Posting Messages
    • Incoming Webhooks
    • Web API
    • RTM API
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36. RTM API vs Events API5
    • RTM API
    • WebSocket-based
    • More responsive ("__ is typing...", online status)
    • Events API
    • HTTP-based
    • Scalable
    5 For more details check out https://api.slack.com/faq#events_api and https://api.slack.com/events
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37. Questions You Should Ask Yourself
    • Post, receive, or both
    • Only messages or including other events
    • A need of your web server
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38. "Which API is right for your Slack app?" 6
    6 https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/getting-started-with-slacks-apis-f930c73fc889
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39. Preparing Endpoints
    • Handle mentions
    • Handel interactions (e.g. a button is pressed)
    • Return dynamic options
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40. Handle Mentions
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41. Tips: URL Verification
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42. Handle Interactions
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43. Dynamic Options
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44. Tips: Handle Timeout
    You must respond within 3 seconds. If it takes your application
    longer to process the request, we recommend responding with
    an HTTP 200 OK immediately, then use the response_url7
    {
    "type": "interactive_message",
    "actions": […],
    "callback_id": "select_simple_1234",
    …
    "original_message": {…},
    "response_url": "https://hooks.slack.com/actions/T012AB0A1/123456789/JpmK0yzoZDeRiqfeduTBYXWQ"
    }
    7 https://api.slack.com/interactive-messages
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45. Tips: Debugging
    with ngrok
    • ngrok exposes local servers to the
    public internet over secure tunnels
    • A free plan is available8
    8 https://ngrok.com/pricing
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46. Agenda
    • How to schedule release
    • How to automate release
    • Case Study: Cookpad
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47. Weekly Release Cycle
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48. Developing New Features
    • Run deploy chatbot command to
    distribute a working-in-progress
    feature to internal members:
    • To test it on different devices
    • To check it with PM
    • To ask QA to test it
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49. Wednesday: Code Freeze
    • Run code_freeze chatbot command
    to:
    • Create a release candidate
    branch off from master
    • Ask translators to translate new
    phrases
    • Post a list of changes to Slack
    • Run deploy command to make an
    RC build for QA team
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50. Friday: Submit
    • Run deploy chatbot command to:
    • Archive the RC and upload it to
    App Store Connect
    • Run submit chatbot command to:
    • Submit a new version with a
    specified build
    • Post a message to Slack
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51. Monday: Release
    • Run release chatbot command to:
    • Release "Pending Developer
    Release" version
    • Download dSYMs and upload
    them to a crash reporting service
    • Create the next version in App
    Store Connect
    • Post a message to Slack
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52. Design Slack Messages
    Understands Slack Attachment9
    9 https://api.slack.com/docs/message-attachments
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53. Tips: Message Builder10
    10 https://api.slack.com/docs/messages/builder
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54. The Art of Working from Home...
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55. Wrap-up
    • Release frequently
    • Stick to a constant schedule
    • Set up remote build servers
    • Leverage chat application to do operational works
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56. Yusei Nishiyama
    @yuseinishiyama
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57. We are Hiring
    https://www.cookpadteam.com
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58. Thank you!
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