New product release on Google Play without affecting beta

Question

I have a production app in the Google Play store. I also released a beta to a limited group using the Google Play beta. However, if I make changes to the production application, then I need to rebuild and republish the beta application because it will be overwritten with the new production version. This is very unpleasant when I want to make some production bug fixes without changing the beta. Is there a way to publish a new production application without canceling the current beta?

Answer 1

The main problem is that Google Play updates are based on the build number ( versionCode ), and don't care which channel .apk comes from.

Your only option is not to write the assembly numbers of the assembly, but to leave spaces instead. For example, if your product is versionCode="10" , make a beta versionCode="20" , which will give you the opportunity to publish nine more small releases of prod before you encounter the problem of canceling the beta build.

Although there are two questions with this approach: - Obviously, it does not scale very well. “This makes it difficult to manage assembly numbers, since now you have to keep a record of which assembly has reached the assembly number.” - If you do not invalidate the beta build, your beta users will still have the errors that you just fixed in the new prod build until you update them.

Please note that if you do not have change rights that prevent automatic updates, the invalidity of the beta assembly and the publication of a new one is not so important; most users will not even notice that they have been updated (unless your application tells them explicitly).

Answer 2

I believe Google’s reason requires that your new production version of the application overlap the beta because of the basic development cycle. Typically, applications begin at the Alpha stage, then beta, and finally end with production.

The beta version is overwritten because the next logical step in the loop from the beta version is the release. When you resubmit the beta, it will be the current version of the code as a production version, along with bug fixes that are being tested.

Answer 3

The scheme is very simple:

Google Play uses versionCode to indicate the apk currently available to the user. It doesn’t matter if this is a production or beta. It is also not permitted to load an assembly with versionCode lower than in the previous assembly.

So, in your case, you need to download the production version, and then download the beta version (even if its only change is versionCode ). Sometimes some of your beta users may download a production release, but in any case they will receive a beta version.