December is here, the holiday season is about to begin, and there’s also one more thing… it’s our birthday! ? In addition to some cake and other tasty things, that means it’s time to sit down and recap everything that happened during the year. So, here’s the post about last year’s achievements, and below, you’ll find Codemagic’s top highlights of the year 2021.
Codemagic in numbers
| 2020 | 2021 | |
|---|---|---|
| Builds run | ~600,000 | >1,600,000 |
| Slack community member | 3,000+ | 4,500+ |
| Twitter followers | ~4,000 | 5,000+ |
| Blog articles published | 71 | 90+ |
That’s a lot of growth, even for us! In 2021, not only did we reach our goal of 1M builds, but we went way beyond that! We are extremely grateful to the community for your support.
Major highlights of 2021
As of December 2021, we are still a relatively young CI/CD in the market. This means we are working hard and quickly to deliver the best product to our users. Over the last 12 months, we have released 15+ major updates and numerous smaller updates. On average, we’ve pushed a new feature to production every five days. When you provide CI/CD as a service, you have to follow DevOps yourself, right?
So, here are the key features we’ve implemented in 2021:
Firebase App Distribution
Firebase App Distribution allows app developers to distribute both Android and iOS builds to QA testers on one platform. This makes it ideal for cross-platform frameworks like Flutter and React Native to publish QA builds to one place for both platforms. By getting your apps onto testers’ devices quickly, you can get feedback early and often.
Magic Actions to cut iOS build times
Magic Actions are quite cool! The feature was developed as a solution for the following notorious problems with App Store Connect:
- Uploaded builds are not immediately available
- Waiting on Apple costs money
- The feedback cycle is long
With Magic Actions, you don’t need to wait around and pay for Apple to process your builds in order to get a green build and continue with development. Your build will finish right after the app artifact has been uploaded, and you will receive a build status update. All of the following steps, like waiting for Apple to process the build, submitting the build to beta review, uploading release notes, or distributing the build to beta groups, take place asynchronously.
Take a look at some real-life examples of how Magic Actions cut build times.
Linux and Windows VMs
New build machines are live! ✔️ Our build infrastructure now includes Windows VMs and Linux build machines — now, you can more quickly build Android, Windows, and other non-Mac workflows. Linux build machines come with out-of-the-box support for an Android emulator with hardware acceleration.
Unity CI/CD
It’s no secret that making games is complicated, no matter how talented and passionate the developers are. Constantly switching platforms, long build times, lack of control, and manual distribution are just some of the horrors that can delay your game publishing or result in a buggy first release. This is where we step in to make your life easier.
With Codemagic, you have complete control over your CI/CD pipeline plus some unique advantages. We can provide macOS, Linux, and Windows VMs with varying levels of performance to suit your needs! Additionally, Codemagic allows you to easily distribute your apps to the App Store or Google Play, as well as deliver them to testers with Firebase App Distribution.
On average, we see that Codemagic is saving developers around 20% of their workday!
And remember, you don’t have to dive into setting up Codemagic for Unity by yourself — you can contact us first to get a free demo. Check out more on Unity.
CI/CD for everyone
Our priority is always to create the best possible experience for our users! In 2021, we delivered a ton of good news about helpful features that will let developers stay in the flow and leave all the frustrating parts behind. We also made a huge push toward enterprise readiness by offering enterprise plans with greater customizability in terms of hardware, software, and services. Check out our enterprise page, and contact us for an offer.
There’s a saying: Six hours of debugging can save you five minutes of reading documentation. In case you choose the five-minute route, rest assured that we prioritize comprehensive documentation. No matter whether you’re a Flutter, iOS (Native), Android (Native), React Native, Ionic, or Cordova developer, you can find plenty of sample projects to walk you through the process of setting up and maintaining your pipeline.
Additionally, to assist you with building, code signing, and publishing apps, we have developed a variety of CLI utilities, collectively known as Codemagic CLI tools. You can check them out on GitHub. These CLI tools are open source, so you are welcome to install them locally as well as share feedback and contribute.
Flutter issue triage
The Codemagic team does one more thing that you may not be aware of. As Flutter continues to grow in scope and popularity, so does the number of reported issues, which is currently sitting nearly 10,000! Building on our Flutter expertise, we have helped to keep these issues under control by providing front-line issue triage in several Flutter repositories on GitHub. In short, this means that Codemagic has been ensuring that all valid issues become actionable for the Flutter team to handle.
In 2021, an interesting race caught the eye of developers — will Flutter first reach 130,000 stars or 10,000 issues? The race ended with a win for the stars.
Blog articles
A mobile app developer isn’t at the top of their game unless he/she keeps up with the latest trends and hacks. Codemagic is built by developers for developers, and we understand the importance of providing useful guides, tutorials, and reads to keep up with industry trends.
In only one year, more than half a million developers have read articles from our blog. Thanks to all our writers and everyone who has contributed to the blog!
Take a look at these popular reads from our blog.
Most popular tutorials
Most read articles
? Ebooks!
✔️ Yes! In 2021, we published two ebooks.
[ebook] Flutter libraries we love
This already popular ebook got an update, adding 20+ new libraries to the collection. If you haven’t come across it before, “Flutter libraries we love” is an ebook that covers more than 80 libraries ? sorted into 11 major categories.
[ebook] Testing React Native apps
This ebook acts as a getting-started primer on the world of testing for apps built using the React Native framework. The topics in this ebook cover a wide variety of fundamental concepts and how-tos.
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So, where do the ideas for new features come from? From you! And we are very grateful to you for that! After a user’s feature request gets validation from our dedicated engineers, it’s in the works from there on out. Whether it’s via Slack, Twitter, Facebook — we encourage you to give feedback. We notice your ideas! You need something — we implement it.
What developers say about Codemagic CI/CD
It feels so good how @codemagicio quickly iterates through changes and improvements on their website. Literally every week there’s something new, some UI and UX changes happen all the time. Good job!
— Pawel Petruch (@p_petruch) November 15, 2021
Using @codemagicio to build and publish a quick update for the @ShortcutKeeper Flutter desktop app:
– macOS build in 7 min ?
– Windows build in 6 min ?Both versions submitted for review to the Mac App Store and Microsoft Store in ~ half an hour! ? pic.twitter.com/WwN60OR4dc
— Minas Giannekas ? (@whiplashoo) November 20, 2021
if you are a #Flutter developer but don’t own a Mac you still can publish iOS and Mac Apps by using @MacinCloud for developing and testing. With @codemagicio you get fully automated builds and Storeuploads. for small projects even for free.
— Thomas Burkhart ?????? (@ThomasBurkhartB) May 19, 2021
It has been a (Code)magical year, and we’re extremely grateful for your love and support. But this is not where we stop! Our roadmap is full of ambitious ideas and new product updates and features.
We say a huge thanks to all of you who have trusted us and used Codemagic CI/CD to build your mobile apps. You are the reason that keeps us going.
A birthday present
Usually people receive presents on their birthdays, but why not give one? So, to celebrate our birthday, we’re giving away a 30% discount for the professional plan. Use the code SAVE30 to get:
- unlimited build minutes on premium macOS, Linux & Windows machines
- 3 concurrent builds
- unlimited team seats
- in-app support.
for $210 per month (paid annually). The code is valid till December 12, 2021.
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