when I connected play stores to appcenter.ms, I'm seeing only the production, beta, and alpha track.
How can I distribute it to the internal testing track?
Related
I'm using Google Play Store to distribute an app.
For a certain issue, I would like to install an OLDER version of my app to one of the client's device.
I'm struggling to do so, is there any way to do that?
No matter how and which "testing" method I apply, Google Play automatically shows the HIGHEST version of the app which is the "release" version ignoring the old test versions.
Creating an APK would be NO way because I need Google Play's own signature in the apk to make things work (to test the things we would like to)
Is there any way at all to distribute my OLDER app version from Google Play store?
(By the way Google's testing methods are inexpressibly unusable even apart from this problem. You never see what really happens, you cannot really manage the testing channels the GUI is miserable the notification email is late the testing is slow and painful you don't see the version number in the Google Play Store, there are like 3 methods to do so and the difference between them is not self explaining, I give 1 start to the developers who made these parts of Google Play I hope they read this.)
Thanks in advance.
From Google Play Console go to App bundle explorer
Then choose the version you want to install
Go to Downloads tab
click on Copy sharable link
install it from you device using this link
Note: the device's Google Play account should be an internal tester and enable internal testing from Google Play on this device.
I've sucessfully connected my app account with Console Developers Play Store and AppCenter
Inside Appcenter dashboard I have:
AppName => Distribute -> stores haves 3 ways to distribute app version
Production
Beta
Alpha.
I've created into PlayStore an Alpha Internal Track... But it does not show in AppCenter... How can I publish from App Center to Play Store with a Private Internal Alpha Version
I was wondering the same and asked the question through Intercom. Here is Anvesh's answer:
Hi there, thank you for contacting us!
Right now, Google APIs don't expose a way to get to the Test/Customized tracks.
Our Team is having a close watch on those API changes so AppCenter can support them.
Until the APIs themselves don't expose these, I'm afraid we're helpless.
I have an mobile app. While in debug, I need to test several different stuff, so I created a button that shows a list of these tests.
Even in Release, some things are different (Apple Push Notification). So I need to test in release too.
Is it ok to leave these shortcuts hidden when releasing the app?
Doing so would leave a massive security hole in your application, which should be avoided at all costs. In fact, if you're creating an iOS app, I doubt such a hole would get by Apple's independent release testing.
Ideally, you should be using separate coding environments for development, testing and production. When you're developing, you should be using one of the various simulators to test as you work. There's an in-built one in XCode that can simulate a variety of Apple devices, and if you're using something like Ionic, you can hook it to a live preview in a web browser.
Once you're happy that things are working on your computer, you then should be deploying a development .ipa / .apk file. This file should only be released 'in-house', manually. If that's all good, you move on to testing. For testing, create a secondary file, and this can be distributed for external testing through something like Apple TestFlight.
For production, you'd remove any 'backdoors', as in theory, your app would be ready for the public. At this stage it's a simple matter of releasing it through either the Google Play Store or Apple Store.
I have trying to debug my android app through Xamarin Live Player , it gets builds but give the error Deploy was cancelled.
Has anyone faced this and got this working .
Xamarin Live player Limitations
Some system classes cannot be overridden (for example, you cannot implement a subclass).
Some platform features that require provisioning can't work in the Xamarin Live Player app (however it has been configured for common operations like camera access).
Custom targets and build steps are ignored. For example, tools like Fody cannot be incorporated.
xamarin live player still not stable and there are issues that everyone complain. until it release high stable update best thing to deploy over usb connection
also see this -
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/live/troubleshooting/
https://forums.xamarin.com/discussions/tagged/xamarin-live-player
I am working on developing a Xamarin hybrid (html+js+css) application for Android using Visual Studio for iOS.
My client wants to upload builds (of the app) to the Xamarin Test Cloud. I am new to Xamarin, so I have no idea about Xamarin Test Cloud. I have done some research and found that we can write test cases in our application and send them to Xamarin Test Cloud.
So far I understand it, Xamarin Test Cloud is only for app testing purposes, not for sharing buildAs with multiple users or clients. Am I right or not?
Please let me know more about Xamarin Test Cloud, i.e what are the uses of it.
You are partly correct.
Xamarin Test Cloud is an automated testing solution. You are able to run UI-tests on every platform. This will allow you to see how the application performs on the many android devices and versions, as well as the different versions of iOS. Xamarin Test Cloud however is limited to UI testing (and crash reporting based on your testing scenario). Unit Tests and Integration tests (mostly technical tests) cannot be performed by Xamarin Test Cloud.
In order to distribute the app to test-users you should use HockeyApp. HockeyApp has recently be acquired by microsoft (source) and allows you to distribute your app to a closed group of people for feedback (usually used for User Acceptance Tests (UAT)). Note: HockeyApp will soon be integrated with Microsofts' Application Insights service where it offers more features (insights in performance of your app, time used, time looked at Activity X etc) - see how to set this up
So in short:
Xamarin Test Cloud - Automated UI Testing on hundreds of devices
HockeyApp - User Acceptance Tests with distribution
Xamarin Insights (or Microsoft Application Insights) - insight in the usage of your app on different levels.
Correct. TestCloud is used to run your app on thousands of devices at once to figure out how your app behaves and how it looks on many different device quickly and without having to actually buy thousands of devices. It is not for sharing your app with specific users. If you want to share your app with specific users, you can either use HockeyApp for iOS and Android or you can use TestFlight for iOS and the Google Play Store's Beta program for Android.
In short Xamarin.Test.Cloud is a cloud service for automated UI tests.Those UI tests can be written in Calabash and/or C# NUnit project in form of unit tests. Most of the developers use C# version form od the framework. This Xamarin product is called Xamarin.UITest which is created locally with Xamarin tools and uploaded to Xamarin.Test.Cloud.
More in depth...
Xamarin.UITest which most of developers use is basically NUnit C# project in Viusal Studio or Xamarin.Studio. It loads user's apk (Andriod) or ipa/app (iOS) file and prepares everything for testing.
Testing might include:
exploring UI (detecting content, widgets/views/controls names and content)
interacting with UI (tapping, scrolling)
recording interactions from 2. so they can be used in automated tests
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/testcloud/uitest/
API is not complex, but needs some [short] time for learning. Maybe more for tricks like working with pickers (especially in Xamarin.Forms), backdoors, gestures etc. My daughter is 15 and she's doing talks on Xamarin.UITest, because it is that simple and nice for kids to learn coding and feel "productive".
Sample interaction:
app.Tap( c => c.Marked("Login") );
Another useful command is: tree - to see Visual Tree (DOM) of the Ui presented.
NOTE:
Xamarin.UITest is not limited to apps written in Xamarin!
It can be used with Android app written in Java, iOS app written in objective-c/swift!
Xamarin.UITest differs for hybrid apps, because the DOM is actually HTML DOM. Hence - try exploring DOM with tree command.
With Xamarin.UITest and nunit runner you can test locally on your devices and/or emulators/simulators. 15 minutes limit is removed if I can recall correctly.
Xamarin.Test.Recorder is useful tool for exploring and recording Xamarin.UITests. On Mac this should be standalone app and on Windows you'll need Visual Studio Enterprise (restriction).
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/testcloud/testrecorder/
Xamarin.Inspector from package called Xamarin.Interactive is another standalone tool for analysing and inspecting UI of the app.
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/inspector/
When UI test is written - the project output (dlls) are uploaded to the Xamarin.Test.Cloud. To get project output you'll need Xamarin.Studio or Visual Studio with Xamarin tools installed.
Before upload there are several steps user needs to do like: selecting devices (number depends on pricing), getting APIKey for particular tests. Uploading is done through commandline...
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/testcloud/uitest/working-with/submitting-tests-to-xamarin-test-cloud/
Then user goes to XTC (Xamarin.Test.Cloud) portal and checks results (reports, screenshots etc).
This is how it looks like behind the scenes (this is what I like to show during my talks):
https://youtu.be/PQMBCoVIABI?t=3432
Handsome Danish guys (which cannot play handball) on stage and 2000+ devices on the shelves (it was 1900+ devices in 2015-09) in the datacenter...
For sharing - use HockeyApp
For monitoring - use Xamarin.Insights
NOTE: HockeyApp and Xamarin.Insight are being merged to single product for beta-testing and monitoring (TestFlight like).