Android build process

This page describes the process of building Android projects with EAS Build. You may want to read this if you are interested in the implementation details of the build service.

Build Process

Let's take a closer look at the steps for building Android projects with EAS Build. We'll first run some steps on your local machine to prepare the project, and then we'll actually build the project on a remote service.

Local Steps

The first phase happens on your computer. EAS CLI is in charge of completing the following steps:

Check if the git index is clean - this means that there aren't any uncommitted changes. If it's not clean, an error is thrown. We use git to prepare a tarball of your project to upload to the build service.
Prepare the credentials needed for the build unless builds.android.PROFILE_NAME.withoutCredentials is set to true.
- Depending on the value of builds.android.PROFILE_NAME.credentialsSource, the credentials are obtained from either the local credentials.json file or from the EAS servers. If the auto or remote mode is selected but no credentials exist yet, you're prompted to generate a new keystore.
Additional step for generic projects: Check if the Android project is configured to be buildable on the EAS servers.
In this step, EAS CLI checks whether android/app/build.gradle contains apply from: "./eas-build.gradle". If the project is not configured, EAS CLI runs auto-configuration steps (learn more below).
Create the tarball containing shallow clone of your local repository (git clone --depth 1 ...).
Upload the project tarball to a private AWS S3 bucket and send the build request to EAS Build.

Remote Steps

Next, this is what happens when EAS Build picks up your request:

Create a new Docker container for the build.
- Every build gets its own fresh container with all build tools installed there (Java JDK, Android SDK, NDK, and so on).
Download the project tarball from a private AWS S3 bucket and unpack it.
Run yarn install in the project root (or npm install if yarn.lock does not exist).
Additional steps for managed projects:
- Run expo prebuild to convert the project to a generic one.
- Configure the Android similarly to the step 3 from Local Steps.
Restore the keystore (if it was included in the build request).
Run ./gradlew COMMAND in the android directory inside your project.
- COMMAND is the command defined in your eas.json at builds.android.PROFILE_NAME.gradleCommand. It defaults to :app:bundleRelease which produces the AAB (Android App Bundle).
Upload the build artifact to AWS S3.
- The artifact path can be configured in eas.json at builds.android.PROFILE_NAME.artifactPath. It defaults to android/app/build/outputs/**/*.{apk,aab}. We're using the fast-glob package for pattern matching.

Project Auto-Configuration

Every time you want to build a new Android app binary, we validate that the project is set up correctly so we can seamlessly run the build process on our servers. This mainly applies to generic projects, but similar steps are run when building managed projects.

Android Keystore

Android requires you to sign your application with a certificate. That certificate is stored in your keystore. The Google Play Store identifies applications based on the certificate. This means that if you lose your keystore, you may not be able to update your application in the store. However, with Play App Signing, you can mitigate the risk of losing your keystore.

Your application's keystore should be kept private. Under no circumstances should you check it in to your repository. Debug keystores are the only exception because we don't use them for uploading apps to the Google Play Store.

Configuring Gradle

Let's focus on building a release app binary. Like we previously mentioned, your app binary needs to be signed with the keystore. Since we're building the project on a remote server, we had to come up with a way to provide Gradle with credentials which aren't, for security reasons, checked in to your repository. When running eas build:configure, we're writing the android/app/eas-build.gradle file with the following contents:

// Build integration with EAS

import java.nio.file.Paths

android {
  signingConfigs {
    release {
      // This is necessary to avoid needing the user to define a release signing config manually
      // If no release config is defined, and this is not present, build for assembleRelease will crash
    }
  }

  buildTypes {
    release {
      // This is necessary to avoid needing the user to define a release build type manually
    }
  }
}

def isEasBuildConfigured = false

tasks.whenTaskAdded {
  def debug = gradle.startParameter.taskNames.any { it.toLowerCase().contains('debug') }

  if (debug) {
    return
  }
  
  // We need to configure EAS Build only once
  if (isEasBuildConfigured) {
    return
  }

  isEasBuildConfigured = true;

  android.signingConfigs.release  {
    def credentialsJson = rootProject.file("../credentials.json");

    if (credentialsJson.exists()) {
      if (storeFile && System.getenv("EAS_BUILD") != "true") {
        println("Path to release keystore file is already set, ignoring 'credentials.json'")
      } else {
        try {
          def credentials = new groovy.json.JsonSlurper().parse(credentialsJson)
          def keystorePath = Paths.get(credentials.android.keystore.keystorePath);
          def storeFilePath = keystorePath.isAbsolute()
            ? keystorePath
            : rootProject.file("..").toPath().resolve(keystorePath);

          storeFile storeFilePath.toFile()
          storePassword credentials.android.keystore.keystorePassword
          keyAlias credentials.android.keystore.keyAlias
          keyPassword credentials.android.keystore.keyPassword 
        } catch (Exception e) {
          println("An error occurred while parsing 'credentials.json': " + e.message)
        }
      }
    } else {
      if (storeFile == null) {
        println("Couldn't find a 'credentials.json' file, skipping release keystore configuration")
      }
    }
  }

  android.buildTypes.release {
    signingConfig android.signingConfigs.release
  } 
}

The most important part is the release signing config. It's configured to read the keystore and passwords from the credentials.json file at the project root. Even though you're not required to create this file on your own, it's created and populated with your credentials by EAS Build before running the build.

This file is imported in android/app/build.gradle like this:

// ...

apply from: "./eas-build.gradle"