I am looking for a way to build the APK of my React Native App automatically using a GitLab pipeline, I can't seem to find a solution on the web that does not use Expo, do you have any ideas on how to do this?
We have a team of testers who would like to test the APK on a real device, do you have any idea on how to achieve this (without Expo)?
Hey I've successfully automated react native build apps using gitlab CI/CD pipelines. You need to create ".gitlab-ci.yml" file in the root of your project and add below scripts and may change as per your needs.
before_script:
- yarn install --frozen-lockfile #--frozen-lockfile to make sure we will have the same packages version
stages:
- build
build project:
stage: build
image: reactnativecommunity/react-native-android
cache:
key:
files:
- yarn.lock
paths:
- node_modules
policy: pull #`pull` the jobs pull the cache at the beginning but do not push the changes again.
script:
- yarn build:apk # is the scripts defined in your package.json as "cd android #&& ./gradlew assembleRelease"
- yarn install --pure-lockfile --cache-folder .yarn
artifacts:
paths:
- android/app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk
let me know if you have any problems