fastlane

[zenangst]

What do you guys think about fastlane, should it be something that we always setup or is this something that we should use for edge-cases, like our own product, where we create multiple builds of the same application?

fastlane takes a lot of time and is rapidly changing, I can remember spending quiet a lot of time just maintaining fastlane just because of version updates and doing gem update fastlane can be tiring.

But it also has it's upsides as you can easily invoke the command and head to lunch (or what ever other thing that you are doing) and just wait for the thing to release. The downside is that if it doesn't work the first time, the time that you initially set out to save will be lost because of configuration tinkering etc.

I'm torn on this one, I find it super convenient when shipping new versions to staging but I am far from amazed when it comes to shipping things to iTunes Connect etc.

Maybe the problem is that we really haven't dug into the gem enough to actually know what it is all about and how it works, or we adopted it to early and had to change everything as the gem matured. I don't really know the reason but I think that we should definitely discuss this further.

[RamonGilabert]

Voted 👎.

The reason is basically the fact that for a small app, I find it more convenient to just do it in a quick archiving. Also the Fabric app helps when distributing, so no pain there. It can save me 3 minutes when it's archiving? Sure, but I like to take those 3 minutes to relax after I've done the job.

[vadymmarkov]

Only once it worked from the first time for me, in my latest project, and I was kind of surprised 😄 But I prefer to ship versions to Fabric from the command line, therefore like this approach. When it comes to AppStore release I prefer to do it from Xcode, it feels safer and I have more control in a way.

[zenangst]

I think that might be a good middle ground, I use fabric in my current project for shipping new staging versions. But I will probably use Xcode when pushing it to iTunes Connect with the same argument that @vadymmarkov has.

I also agree with @RamonGilabert's comment, you get a sense of accomplishment just by doing the task. When you are done, you are done, in contrast to fastlane that is very anti-climatic. Even if you don't have to do all the steps, you still have to monitor the thing so that it actually does succeed, because if it did fail silently, then you wasted a lot of time.

But as I stated in the initial comment, shipping our internal product would be an awful task to deal with if we didn't have fastlane to help us out with all the builds.

[RamonGilabert]

I agree, it would be a pain to distribute if we didn't have fastlane, but I also want to note that this app is an extreme case scenario where 5 or 6 projects eat from the same plate and get distributed at the same time, etc.

"Normally" I don't think that happens? Meaning projects that take a couple of minutes to distribute. You get a notification from fabric, you tap, done. Isn't it?

[zenangst]

Yeah, it is a super edge-case! I think we can all agree on that. But I still like it for pooping out versions to staging. Unless they silently fail, then I get sad.

[RamonGilabert]

That's sorta why I am trying to push back on fastlane. Something that can work only once in a whole project or fail silently, I don't think it's a good fit for this, seeing the time that saves you. (3 minutes per release?).

[RamonGilabert]

After two days working in the Swift Migration and today fixing the networking, Mixpanel, transitions, etc. I am releasing to Fabric. Now, I can take a break of the buggy and crash-(y) Xcode and relax for a while, read some issues, go to check Open Source PRsts, etc.

I could do the same with Fastlane, true, but I can get it as an excuse. In the meantime, I can check the bar, see if it's archiving or not.

[onmyway133]

I like fastlane for its organizing tasks (bump version, add new record, update release notes) and generating provisioning profiles

When it builds fail, it's mostly due to our fault, like pod not in sync, missing files in target, ...

The most error I get is it can't upload builds to iTunes or Fabric, in this case I have to press the Distribute button on Fabric mac app again. For appstore, I have to run the script again 😢

[zenangst]

If the silent failure of fastlane is an issue, that can be fixed by catching it an doing something with that error other than just printing it in the terminal. Like sending a Slack message, email or iMessage.

[RamonGilabert]

Then I don't understand what gives you a part of being able to use Xcode in the meantime, if you are telling me that you have to press Distribute.

Only thing I have to do for Fabric is press Archive, wait until I get the notification, press Distribute.

[onmyway133]

@RamonGilabert The crashlytics action in fastlane seems to not reliable asDistribute in Fabric mac app. The same goes for deliver vs Xcode

[RamonGilabert]

Yeah, that's why I am raging against Fastlane. 😊

[zenangst]

What fastlane does handle for you that I think is really nice is sigh, where it reaches out to the portal and fetches the provisioning profiles for you when needed. This is a real timesaver when joining a project that you haven't had setup on your machine before.

[zenangst]

Seems like majority vote says fastlane is a go so I'll close this issue.