Development and operations, DevOps, is in my opinion essential for getting things done with timely manner and it’s always good to hear how others are doing it by attending meetups. This time DevOps Finland went Mobile and we heard nice presentations about continuous delivery for mobile applications, mobile testing with Appium and the Robot Framework and efficient mobile development cycle. Compared to developing Web applications mobile brings some extra hurdles to jump but nothing that’s not solvable. Here are my short notes about the meetup.
The meetup was hosted by Zalando Technology at their new office here in Helsinki. Zalando is known to many as that online store that sells shoes, clothing and other fashion items but things don’t sell themselves and behind the scenes they have lots of technologies to keep things running. For the record I think they said that the meetup had 65 attendees of the 100.
Also if mobile is your thing there’s a new Meetup group for mobile developers in Finland which was announced at the meetup. They’re also on Twitter and Facebook.
Continuous Delivery for Mobile Applications
Rami Rantala from Zalando talked about “Continuous Delivery for Mobile Applications” and how they’re managing releases of their Fleek app which is available for Android and iOS in German markets.
Continuous delivery for mobile apps has solvable hurdles, @RamiRantala from @ZalandoTech at #DevOpsFinland meetup. Automate all the things! pic.twitter.com/EWIC92L7Zo
— Marko Wallin (@walokra) October 18, 2016
They didn’t arrive to the final setup straightforward and it was iterative approach with how Git is used, code merged and releases done. Using Fastlane for all tedious tasks, like generating screenshots, dealing with code signing, and releasing your application made automating things easier. Interesting note was that their build server slaves are ansible managed Mac Minis on Rami’s desk. They had solved the problems nicely but testing is still difficult.
DevOps and rollbacks don’t work together, you roll forward.
Mobile testing with Appium and the Robot Framework
Mobile testing can be done with different tools and one option is to use Robot Framework just like for Web applications. Elmeri Poikolainen from Eficode demoed how to use Appium and run Robot Framework tests on real device. It has some limitations and I think with native applications it could be better to use native test tools like what Xcode has to offer.
You can use #RobotFramework with #Appium for testing iOS and Android mobile apps. Nice intro at #DevOpsFinland meetup. Alt to native tests? pic.twitter.com/h0fc9tQjDz
— Marko Wallin (@walokra) October 18, 2016
Efficient Mobile Development Cycle
The last and most fast-paced talk was by Jerry Jalava from Qvik about “Efficient Mobile Development Cycle“. He talked about different practices and tools in the development cycle and it was nice overview to the complexity of the process from design to done. You can for example run remote preview with 27 devices.
Efficient #mobiledev cycle looks similar to web but just with different tools as @W_I tells at #DevOpsFinland meetup. Nice tool suggestions. pic.twitter.com/IJRntMbiaZ
— Marko Wallin (@walokra) October 18, 2016
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