How to Distribute a Build With Firebase App Distribution in CI

Firebase App Distribution ships pre-release builds to named tester groups from CI using a Google service account credential.

Authenticate the Firebase CLI with GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS pointing at a decoded service account key, then run appdistribution:distribute with the app ID and tester groups.

Steps

• Store the service account JSON as a base64 secret and decode it on the runner.
• Set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to the decoded file path.
• Run firebase appdistribution:distribute with the app ID and groups.

Terminal

echo "$FIREBASE_SA_B64" | base64 -d > "$RUNNER_TEMP/firebase-sa.json"
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="$RUNNER_TEMP/firebase-sa.json"
firebase appdistribution:distribute app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk \
  --app "1:1234567890:android:abcdef" \
  --groups "qa,beta-testers" \
  --release-notes "CI build $GITHUB_SHA"

Gotchas

• The service account needs the Firebase App Distribution Admin role to publish releases.
• Remove the decoded credential file after distribution completes.

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