Fasttrack

Fasttrack is a command line tool for controlling the release of app versions in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. It was built to simplify the tasks of creating app versions, setting the release properties and controlling the rollout of app versions in multi-app Flutter projects.

It is heavily inspired by fastlane, but only supports the central parts of fastlane to control the final steps of the app release process.

Supported functionality

• App & Play Store Release Status
• App Store Version Creation
• App Store Submission for Review
• Play Store Version Promotion
• App Store Phased Release Update
• Play Store Staged Rollout Update

(Yet) unsupported functionality

• iOS Build Code Singing
• App Store archive upload
• Play Store bundle upload

Installation

Install the fasttrack tool to be globally available on the command line

dart pub global activate fasttrack

Configuration

fasttrack expects its configuration in a config.yaml file located in the fasttrack directory in the project root directory.

metadata:
  dir: . # the directory where the project metadata like release notes are located
appStore: # this section defines the App Store related configuration 
  credentials:
    keyFile: auth_key.pem # the private authentication key in pem format
    keyId: # the id of the provided authentication key
    issuerId: # the issuer id of the publisher
  release: # the default release settings for all app configurations. Can be overridden for each app
    phased: false # whether to do a phased release for the app by default
    manual: false # whether to manually release the app after review
  apps: # this section defines the app specific release configurations
    id: 111111111 # either you can only the define the app id and use the common release settings
    id2: # or you can override the release settings for each app individually
      appId: 22222222
      phased: true
      manual: true
playStore: # this section defines the Play Store related configuration
  keyFile: auth_key.json # the authentication for the Google Play Store service user in json format
  rollout: 0.1 # the initial rollout fraction when promoting an app version to the release track 
  apps: # the app specific release configurations
    id: package.name.1 # either you can specify the application id directly and use the default release configuration
    id2: # or you can override the rollout fraction per app
      packageName: package.name.2
      rollout: 0.2

To get your authentication credentials, please follow the corresponding documentation for Android and iOS.

Commands

You can always specify the --help option, get a list of all commands and options available for fasttrack and all subcommands.

By default, all commands will run the operation for all apps defined in the config. You can run a command for only one or a set of apps by specifying the --app or -a option.

fastrack appstore status --app id
fastrack playstore status -a id

Fasttrack will use the version and build number found in the version property of project's pubspec.yaml file. You can always run a command against a specific version, by defining the version with the --version or -v parameter.

All modifying commands will show a prompt to the user, that they have to acknowledge to execute the operation. For a CI/CD system you can suppress this prompt by running the command with the --no-check option.

Play Store commands

fasttrack provides a set of commands to control the release of apps against the Google Play Store. These commands can be addressed by calling fasttrack with the playstore or ps sub command.

All Play Store commands provide the --dry-run flag, which can be used to validate the command against the Play Store API without actually performing a change.

Release Status

Get the release status of all configured apps from Play Store:

fastrack playstore status [--help] [--app] [--version] [--track] [--dry-run]

When running the command without parameters, fasttrack will get the release status for the version currently found in the pubsepc.yaml file of the project. When providing the --version or -v option, you can look up the release status for a specific version. When specifying the --version option with live, you can look up the release status of the version currently live or in rollout.

fasttrack playstore status --version 3.16.1
fasttrack ps status -v live

By default, fasttrack will get the status of the apps on the release track. When you want to get the status on the internal, alpha or beta track, specify the specific track with the --track option.

fasttrack playstore status --track internal

Release Promotion

Promote a release from one track to another. Optionally define a fraction at which the release will be rolled out after the promotion/review on the other track completed.

fasttrack playstore promote [--help] [--app] [--version] [--track=internal] [--to=production] [--rollout] [--no-check] [--dry-run]

By default, fasttrack will promote the apps on the internal to the production track. When you want to promote an app from the alpha or beta track, specify the desired track with the --track option. To define alpha or beta track as destination for the promotion, specify the desired track with the --to option.

fasttrack playstore promote --track alpha --to beta

By default, fasttrack will release the app to the user fraction defined in the rollout parameter in the configuration file. You can override the configured rollout fraction by specifying the desired fraction with the --rollout option. A fraction of 0 will promote the app version as draft. A fraction of 1 will completely release the app version after promotion. A fraction between 0 and 1 will release the app version to the corresponding percentage of users. The fraction can also be defined as percentage between 0% and 100%.

fasttrack playstore promote --rollout 0.2
fasttrack ps promote --r 100%

Release Update

Updates, pauses or completes an app version currently in rollout.

To update the rollout percentage, you can use the update sub command with the desired percentage.

fastrack playstore rollout update 0.5
fasttrack ps rollout update 50%

Use the halt sub command to halt the rollout of the current app version. A halted app version can be resumed later on using the update sub command.

fasttrack playstore rollout halt

To finally complete the rollout and deliver your app version to all of your users, you can use the complete sub command.

fasttrack playstore rollout complete