firebase_Firebase应用分发

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I’ve been around Android development for so long now that my early app distributions were to root the device that wanted it installed and manually plug in the cable to install it via command line. Not the best experience nor the reach you wanted. How do you explain to someone who joined a beta program, that they have to root their device? Thus throw away all their guarantees from the manufacturer and maybe even brick their phones.

我从事Android开发已经有很长时间了，所以我早期的应用发行版是将要安装该设备的设备植根，然后手动插入电缆以通过命令行进行安装。 不是最好的体验，也不是您想要的范围。 您如何向加入Beta版计划的人解释他们必须植根设备？ 因此，放弃了制造商的所有保证，甚至放弃了他们的手机。

Then came other app stores where you could distribute the apps. Later you could even do dropbox links given that your user had checked “Trust unsafe sources” in their settings. To this day, I still remember that on dropbox-sharing links, you have to alter the query to start a download directly from a zero to a one. Otherwise, it didn’t work from most devices, and you ended up on a webpage where you weren’t allowed to download.

然后是其他应用商店，您可以在其中分发应用。 如果您的用户在其设置中选中了“信任不安全来源”，则以后甚至可以创建保管箱链接。 直到今天，我仍然记得，在保管箱共享链接上，您必须更改查询才能直接从零到1开始下载。 否则，它不能在大多数设备上运行，并且您最终进入了不允许下载的网页。

Finally, in 2014 came Beta by Crashlytics (later Fabric Beta), which made it simple to distribute our apps and manage our testers. And that it worked on both Android and iOS was probably the actual selling point. But all good things must come to an end, and due to Crashlytics (and Fabric) being acquired by Google, they saw it more fit to move the functionality under the Firebase brand instead, and so arose Firebase App Distribution.

最终，在2014年出现了Crashlytics的Beta版(后来的Fabric Beta版)，这使得分发我们的应用程序和管理测试人员变得很简单。 而且它在Android和iOS上都可以正常工作。 但是，所有美好的事物都必须走到尽头，并且由于Google收购了Crashlytics(和Fabric)，他们认为更适合以Firebase品牌移转功能，因此诞生了Firebase App Distribution。

Firebase App Distribution is still in Beta, but I think it’s stable enough. The fact that the team behind it contains members from the team that worked on Fabric Beta assures me so. The thing that gives me a clue that it’s still in the making is the minimal set of features and some hidden limits.

Firebase App Distribution仍处于Beta版，但我认为它足够稳定。 它背后的团队包含从事Fabric Beta团队的成员这一事实向我保证。 让我知道它仍在酝酿中的是最小的功能集和一些隐藏的限制。

To give you a taste of the ease of use, let’s dive in. After reading this, you should feel comfortable in distributing your app via Firebase, and what limitations there are to consider. You have to have your app connected to the Firebase platform first. And if you’re still on Crashlytics, it’s time to migrate since it will close down comes end of March.

为了让您有个易用性的体验，让我们深入研究。阅读本文之后，您应该可以轻松通过Firebase分发应用程序，并且要考虑哪些限制。 您必须先将您的应用连接到Firebase平台。 而且，如果您仍在使用Crashlytics，则该该迁移了，因为它将在3月底关闭。

开始使用 (Get Started)

Click App Distribution in the main menu. You’ll see a welcome screen and a video on how to get started. Click the “Get Started” button, and you will get to the main panel, which will consist of three tabs; Release, Invite links & Testers and Groups.

单击主菜单中的“应用程序分发”。 您会看到一个欢迎屏幕和有关如何开始使用的视频。 单击“入门”按钮，您将进入主面板，该面板将包含三个选项卡。 释放 ， 邀请链接 测试人员和小组 。

测试人员和小组 (Testers and Groups)

Let’s start with “Testers and Groups.” Here you can create a tester by typing an email address; the user will then get an email asking if they want to join.

让我们从“ 测试人员和小组 ”开始。 您可以在此处输入电子邮件地址来创建测试人员； 然后，用户将收到一封电子邮件，询问他们是否要加入。

Let’s create a group, as well. Just click on the “Add group” button. But beware that you can’t change the name of the groups, nor the ID. So use caution since this is how to refer to them from an API like Fastlane and similar.

我们也创建一个组。 只需单击“添加组”按钮。 但是请注意，您不能更改组的名称或ID。 因此请谨慎使用，因为这是从Fastlane之类的API中引用它们的方法。

Now we can add our user to a group as well as remove them. We can also delete both groups and users with ease. So don’t be afraid to test, test, and test. But once you are done testing, I’d say it’s good to try to set your structure and stick to it. Otherwise, you might end up with a bunch of poorly named groups. Or worse, manually handling the move of testers from one group you wish to delete to a new one.

现在，我们可以将用户添加到组中，也可以将其删除。 我们还可以轻松删除组和用户。 因此，不要害怕进行测试，测试和测试。 但是一旦完成测试，我会说尝试设置您的结构并坚持下去是很好的。 否则，您可能会遇到一堆名称不正确的群组。 或更糟糕的是，手动处理测试人员从您要删除的一组到新的一组的移动。

邀请链接 (Invite links)

Invite links are an easy way of acquiring your testers, you create a link to share, and the user can input their mail address to sign up. There is also an option to choose if sign-ups from a specific link should end up in a particular group. Unfortunately, you can only specify one group.

邀请链接是获取测试人员的一种简便方法，您可以创建一个共享链接，并且用户可以输入其邮件地址进行注册。 还有一个选项可以选择是否将来自特定链接的注册最终归入特定组。 不幸的是，您只能指定一个组。

There’s also a neat feature to specify which domain the email must belong to be able to sign up. With the same limitation, only one. Which makes it tedious for me since we have 10–15 domains in our organization, and I don’t want to create 15 invite links.

还有一个简洁的功能，可以指定电子邮件必须属于哪个域才能进行注册。 具有相同的限制，只有一个。 这对我来说很麻烦，因为我们组织中有10-15个域，并且我不想创建15个邀请链接。

Once again, once an invite link is created, it can’t be altered. I don’t mind this as much as invite links come and go, and you probably will want to rotate them, so that old ones don’t get spread. But still, it would be nice to be able to update, for example, to what group the link should feed with users.

再一次，邀请链接一旦创建，就无法更改。 我不介意邀请链接来来去去，您可能希望旋转它们，以免旧链接不散布。 但是，仍然能够将链接更新到用户应该更新到哪个组还是不错的。

It can become a real problem if you have many test users signing up and add them to a group since each group has a hidden limitation to 200 users per group. And would you hit that limit, the next undocumented limit would probably also be a problem, it’s that your entire project only can have 500 users. These limits are not set in stone, but you can’t change them yourself. But if you have over 500 testers, you might be okay with the luxury problem, and you can always reach out to Firebase to see what they can do.

如果您有许多测试用户注册并添加到组中，这将成为一个真正的问题，因为每个组都有一个隐藏的限制，即每个组200个用户。 如果您达到该限制，那么下一个未记录的限制也可能是一个问题，因为您的整个项目只能拥有500个用户。 这些限制不是一成不变的，但您不能自己更改。 但是，如果您有500多名测试人员，那么您可能对奢侈问题没事，您可以随时联系Firebase看看他们可以做什么。

The last thing on invite links is that you need to specify which application the link should invite to test, among the ones registered in your project. It’s hidden at the top. I’ve missed it a couple of times already…

邀请链接的最后一件事是，您需要在项目中注册的应用程序中指定链接应邀请测试的应用程序。 它隐藏在顶部。 我已经错过了好几次了...

During the writing of this post, Firebase has updated the UI for invite links to include the information for which app the invite links are created for, so they listen to feedback for sure. It seems as they are swift to update too.

在撰写本文的过程中，Firebase更新了邀请链接的UI，以包括为其创建邀请链接的应用程序的信息，因此，他们肯定会听取反馈。 似乎他们也很快进行了更新。

发布 (Releases)

Releasing an app is also as simple as drag and drop your apk-file into the web console, if you’re into the drag and drop business. But don’t worry, there’s also support for Fastlane, Gradle, and Firebase CLI if you, like me, prefer the more automatic way of uploading. I’ve only tried Fastlane myself, and it was easy to set up, and the documentation was very straight forward too. So now, each time we merge a pull request into our alpha branch, our build server pushes it to Firebase.

如果您从事拖放业务，发布应用程序也就像将apk文件拖放到Web控制台一样简单。 但是不用担心，如果像我一样喜欢自动上传的方式，还支持Fastlane，Gradle和Firebase CLI。 我自己只是尝试过Fastlane，设置起来很容易， 文档也非常简单。 因此，现在，每次我们将合并请求合并到我们的alpha分支中时，构建服务器都会将其推送到Firebase。

When using the web console, one must once again pay attention to which app that is selected in the semi-hidden drop box at the top since it will only affect that application. But here’s the twist, you can drag any apk into any app. This means if you have to flavors or one beta and one alpha version, you can mix and match the APKs as you wish. The area to drop the apk literally says, “Drag any .apk here to create a new release.”

使用Web控制台时，必须再次注意在顶部的半隐藏式下拉框中选择的应用程序，因为它只会影响该应用程序。 但是，这是一个转折，您可以将任何 apk拖动到任何应用程序中。 这意味着，如果您必须添加口味或一个beta版本和一个alpha版本，则可以根据需要混合和匹配APK。 删除apk的区域的字面意思是：“将任何.apk拖到此处以创建新版本。”

This is both good and bad. The good part is that some rule-set does not force you; you can just test. But the bad thing is that you might expose your testers to inconsistency since they get the application name and version from your APK. So they might sign up for “Awesome App Beta” and then a few weeks in only see the application “Awesome App Feature-Kangaroo.” It’s probably not the end of the world, but testers are easily lost, so let’s not give them reasons for it.

这是好是坏。 好的方面是，某些规则集不会强迫您。 您可以测试。 但是不好的是，由于测试人员会从APK中获取应用程序名称和版本，因此您可能会感到不一致。 因此他们可能会注册“ Awesome App Beta”，然后在几周内只看到应用程序“ Awesome App Feature-Kangaroo”。 这可能不是世界末日，但是测试人员很容易迷失方向，所以让我们不要给他们理由。

结论 (Conclusion)

All in all, Firebase App Distribution is nice and simple, maybe even too simple. But it’s nice to have a testing environment where you can just get started without caring to get the routine going. And when you’re all set and done. Do some polishing before you invite your real testers and give them a great experience.

总而言之，Firebase App Distribution既好又简单，甚至可能太简单了。 但是，拥有一个测试环境很高兴，您可以在这里开始而无需关心例程。 当您完成所有工作后。 在邀请真正的测试人员进行测试之前，请进行一些抛光，为他们提供出色的经验。

翻译自: https://levelup.gitconnected.com/firebase-app-distribution-d7d5c75a73c5

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