Suicide&Co - Building & Submitting The App

When creating a new build, first increment the build number and version code in app.config.ts. You can find them in ios.buildNumber and android.versionCode. Also increment the version in .env under APP_VERSION=.

Next run the prebuild and remove unnecessary variables:

npx expo prebuild

You'll see two files have been updated build.gradle and info.plist check that the version and version codes have been updated in here. In info.plist remove the following as it's not currently needed for the IOS submission:

<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
<string>Allow $(PRODUCT_NAME) to access your camera</string>
<key>NSMicrophoneUsageDescription</key>
<string>Allow $(PRODUCT_NAME) to access your microphone</string>

Make sure you have the eas cli tools installed:

npm install --global eas-cli

Build the app. For a test app set the --profile flag as preview, for a production build set the --profile flag as production. For the --platform flag set the value as all, ios or android depending on what platform you want to create a build for:

eas build --profile production --platform all // create a production build for IOS and Android
eas build --profile preview --platform android // create a preview build for Android

Please note that the env variables are currently set differently on our EAS account: preview will set the env for the test Firebase account and production will set the env for the live Firebase account. These get injected into the app so make sure you build for the correct use case.

Please also note that you will be prompted to log in to your App Store Connect account with your credentials to create a build.

Once you have built the app you will need to submit the build. Firstly login to the EAS account (you can also see the build progress here and queuing times if there are any):

• For Android if it's a preview build click 'Install' and you will be provided with a url and a QR code to download the apk file. Send the QR code to any test users. If it's a production build, it will download an aab which you will send to the Google Play admin to upload.
• For IOS once the build is complete run eas submit --profile production --platform ios. This will ask what you'd like to submit; select "Provide a build ID to identify a build on EAS" and get the build id (I've been getting it from the EAS project url), you'll be prompted to enter your App Store Connect credentials and it will then upload the build which should be available on Testflight and for submission around 5-10 minutes after the upload is finished.