Automate Gradle releases for Android apps

[nya-elimu]

Add a GitHub Action workflow for automatically performing a Gradle release each time a pull request is merged into main for these Android apps:

• vitabu
  Note that automatic Gradle version bumping has been implemented for this app already: Automatic version bumping vitabu#96 (review)

Once it works with the Vitabu app, copy the same solution to these apps:

• content-provider
  • Document steps for releasing a new version content-provider#88
  • Add version upgrade functionality content-provider#90
• analytics
  • Automate Gradle releases analytics#135
• herufi
  • Automate Gradle releases herufi#13

[vivekkiran]

I am interested in this task.

[nya-elimu]

@vivekkiran Great! Sent you an invite to join the GitHub organization 🙂

[nya-elimu]

@vivekkiran Are you still interested?

[nya-elimu]

@vivekkiran? 🙂

[tuancoltech]

@jo-elimu Considering that this plugin https://github.com/ajoberstar/grgit is not maintained any longer (Which vitabu is using), and will soon be oudated, should we use Github Packages x Github Actions for automatic release instead?
If yes, I can help configure that.

[jo-elimu]

@tuancoltech Yes, please research if automating releases is something we can do for all of our Android apps. Thank you.

Also be aware that we are using JitPack for release management of the Model and Webapp repos, as well as the utils libraries for the Analytics app and Content Provider app: http://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai

    implementation 'com.github.elimu-ai:model:model-2.0.80' // See https://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai/model
    implementation 'com.github.elimu-ai:content-provider:1.2.26@aar' // See https://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai/content-provider
    implementation 'com.github.elimu-ai:analytics:3.1.11@aar' // See https://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai/analytics

JitPack automatically detects Git tags (releases) created for a repo, and builds the release assets. So we just need a GitHub workflow that will automatically generate a new tag (version) of each app (and its utils library, if any).

[tuancoltech]

@tuancoltech Yes, please research if automating releases is something we can do for all of our Android apps. Thank you.

Also be aware that we are using JitPack for release management of the Model and Webapp repos, as well as the utils libraries for the Analytics app and Content Provider app: http://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai

implementation 'com.github.elimu-ai:model:model-2.0.80' // See https://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai/model
implementation 'com.github.elimu-ai:content-provider:1.2.26@aar' // See https://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai/content-provider
implementation 'com.github.elimu-ai:analytics:3.1.11@aar' // See https://jitpack.io/#elimu-ai/analytics

JitPack automatically detects Git tags (releases) created for a repo, and builds the release assets. So we just need a GitHub workflow that will automatically generate a new tag (version) of each app (and its utils library, if any).

@jo-elimu I notice that content-provider already had release script which does bumping the patch version, and publish the release here: https://github.com/elimu-ai/content-provider/blob/main/.github/workflows/gradle-release.yml

Should we do the same for other apps?

[jo-elimu]

@tuancoltech Yes, but does that release script also work for the utils module as well? (I mean the version number bumping in utils/build.gradle.)

[tuancoltech]

@tuancoltech Yes, but does that release script also work for the utils module as well? (I mean the version number bumping in utils/build.gradle.)

@jo-elimu By reading the bumping script, I guess the version bumping code only works for app/build.gradle, which will not do the same in utils/buid.gradle.

By any chance do you remember if you did this bumping commit automatically (via running Gradle tasks) or manually (by editing the build.gradle files) ?
d79db5006d0ae891cefa2f4f2114f9e477934bb0

[jo-elimu]

@tuancoltech From what I remember, we just edited the version in the build.gradle files manually for every release. We tried running the script for automating it, but we couldn't get it to work fully.