Draft: Android CI production build and Play Store auto-submission

[danryu]

Description

This PR implements a best-practices CI build for submission of the client to Google Play Store, following the advice at
https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/android-publishing-to-googleplay.html

This includes additional small changes for recording permission with Qt6 on Android, and does not support Qt5.

Note: I have found from experience that it is better to use the Github-image-provided Android SDK/NDK tools, rather than create custom logic to do custom installations of those. See the notes in android.sh.

This build creates 4 x separate .aab files (one for each available Android ABI) and submits them as part of the same package to the Play Store, where the developer can then add it to a Testing track as they please.
Note that this PR doesn't push the build straight to Live/Production status. The default is to go to an Open Testing track for beta testers only, and is in draft status until you promote it in the Play Store GUI.

CHANGELOG: Build Android release for Play Store and auto-submit

Documentation

Requires additional GITHUB SECRETS:

${{ secrets.GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON }}

• Google Play - Service Account JSON setup:
  • Google Play Console -> Setup -> API Access -> Create/Link Google Cloud Project
  • Google Cloud console -> IAM & Admin -> Service Accounts -> Create (Wizard). Then create JSON key and export/save

${{ secrets.GOOGLE_KEYSTORE }}
${{ secrets.GOOGLE_KEYSTORE_PASS }}

• Google Play - Keystore setup - refer to https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/android-publishing-to-googleplay.html#building-the-app

Status of this Pull Request

What is missing until this pull request can be merged?

Checklist

• I've verified that this Pull Request follows the general code principles
• I tested my code and it does what I want
• My code follows the style guide
• I waited some time after this Pull Request was opened and all GitHub checks completed without errors.
• I've filled all the content above

[pljones]

Hi @danryu,

Thanks for your PR. Could you review the check failures and fix them, please.

-- Peter

[danryu]

Pushed all the fixes that I could see needed handling.
This build is now set for Qt 6.3.2 and will fail with Qt5.
I've also updated the recording permission handling to work with Qt6.
From personal experience I highly recommend 6.3.2+ for Android.

[ann0see]

Thank you very much

[ann0see]

This will not work on windows I suppose? Wouldn't the git commit hash or something else be better?

[danryu]

The CI is obviously targeted purely for Linux.
For local building on Windows we can just hardcode any int value.
ANDROID_VERSION_CODE = 123456

Android Version Code requires an integer <=2100000000.
So you'd need some custom logic to convert the shorthash to int first.

I don't like relying on git log because you need a separate version code for armeabi7 and armv8 builds.
The above date output guarantees a unique, valid value for each Play Store submission.

[ann0see]

The CI is obviously targeted purely for Linux.

But as it's in Jamulus.pro we should ensure cross compatibility. Even if it's a noop.

[danryu]

If the additional Github Secrets are added according to the updated Documentation section in this PR, the Auto-Build should complete successfully.

There are some Coding Style failures and I'm not sure how valid or useful the remaining shfmt errors are - unfortunately I don't have more time to devote to this PR.

If desired, you can merge the changes to a future feature branch and I can close this PR.

[ann0see]

Ok. Squashed and merged to a feature branch: https://github.com/jamulussoftware/jamulus/tree/feature/koord/CIPlaystore. Hopefully, in future work can be continued.

Closing.

[hoffie]

@danryu Thanks a lot of upstreaming this! I think this PR contains some very valuable contributions to update the build environment and enable Qt6 compatibility (#2528). Not sure if we should integrate the playstore-related parts right now, might still be a bit early with little to no testing happening in this area.

Sorry for not chiming in earlier (time is limited...). I certainly plan to integrate large parts of this and will submit new PR(s) with the relevant parts (with proper attribution of @danryu, of course).

[danryu]

@hoffie Happy to contribute!

PS if you want to get a sense of the end result of this PR, a reasonable indicator is to try Koord, as installed from the Play Store.
While the Koord app client build differs visually/presentation-wise to Jamulus, the core business logic is basically untouched.
By the way, once the transition to QML is done, mobile UI stuff will of course get a lot easier.

Edit: Note that this PR doesn't push the build straight to Live/Production status. The default is to go to an Open Testing track for beta testers only, and is in draft status until you promote it in the Play Store GUI.
So there's no danger of putting an unwanted build out to the public. You can test in Open/Closed Testing tracks for as long as you like before going "live".

[pljones]

For clarity, we're looking at splitting this into:

• Qt6 for Android
• Google Play Store for Android

Currently "in progress" is #2528.

[ann0see]

I think a lot of work is already done on the feature branch. I'd personally focus on iOS as I don't own an up to date Android device.