Auto increment version code in Android app

user_639524 0
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is there a way to auto-increment the version code each time you build an Android application in Eclipse?

According to http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/versioning.html, you have to manually increment your version code in AndroidManifest.xml.

I understand, you have to run a script before each build which would, e.g. parse AndroidManifest.xml file, find the version number, increment it and save the file before the build itself starts. However, i couldn't find out how and if Eclipse supports runnings scripts before/after builds.

I have found this article about configuring ant builder, but this is not exactly about Android and I fear this will mess up too much the predefined building steps for Android?

Should be a common problem, how did you solve it?

Well, one can do this manually, but as soon as you forget to do this chore, you get different versions with the same number and the whole versioning makes little sense.

version build eclipse android
15 Answers

Here is the Java version for what it's worth. Also handling multiple manifests.

String directory = "d:\\Android\\workspace\\";

String[] manifests = new String[] 
{
        "app-free\\AndroidManifest.xml",
        "app-donate\\AndroidManifest.xml",
};

public static void main(String[] args)
{
    new version_code().run();
}

public void run()
{
    int I = manifests.length;
    for(int i = 0; i < I; i++)
    {
        String path = directory + manifests[i];

        String content = readFile(path);
        Pattern         versionPattern = Pattern.compile( "(.*android:versionCode=\")([0-9]+)(\".*)", Pattern.DOTALL );
        Matcher m = versionPattern.matcher(content);

        if (m.matches())
        {
            int code = Integer.parseInt( m.group(2) ) + 1;

            System.out.println("Updating manifest " + path + " with versionCode=" + code);

            String newContent = m.replaceFirst("$1" + code + "$3");

            writeFile(path + ".original.txt", content);
            writeFile(path, newContent);
        }
        else
        {
            System.out.println("No match to update manifest " + path);
        }
    }
}
user_8074520

There are two solutions I really like. The first depends on the Play Store and the other depends on Git.

Using the Play Store, you can increment the version code by looking at the highest available uploaded version code. The benefit of this solution is that an APK upload will never fail since your version code is always one higher than whatever is on the Play Store. The downside is that distributing your APK outside of the Play Store becomes more difficult. You can set this up using Gradle Play Publisher by following the quickstart guide and telling the plugin to resolve version codes automatically:

plugins {
    id 'com.android.application'
    id 'com.github.triplet.play' version 'x.x.x'
}

android {
    ...
}

play {
    serviceAccountCredentials = file("your-credentials.json")
    resolutionStrategy = "auto"
}

Using Git, you can increment the version code based on how many commits and tags your repository has. The benefit here is that your output is reproducible and doesn't depend on anything outside your repo. The downside is that you have to make a new commit or tag to bump your version code. You can set this up by adding the Version Master Gradle plugin:

plugins {
    id 'com.android.application'
    id 'com.supercilex.gradle.versions' version 'x.x.x'
}

android {
    ...
}
user_45485000
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