Standard Version Expo

Automatic Expo versioning with Standard Version

npm i -D standard-version@next standard-version-expo

What's inside?

Standard version is a tool to automate the versioning of your project using semver and conventional commits. This package includes some helpful bumpers to update the Expo manifest automatically. With these bumpers you can automate updating the version, Android versionCode, and/or iOS buildNumber. You should be able to automate versioning of your app by using a single command, like:

$ npx standard-version --release-as minor

If you receive an error like Invalid Version: undefined, make sure your package.json has a starting version.

Getting started

It's recommended to install both Standard Version and this package as devDependency. You can do this with the npm command listed at the top of this read me. After you installed the packages, we need to configure Standard Version using any of the configuration methods listed here. Here is an example configuration that updates the version, Android versionCode, and iOS buildNumber using the recommended approaches.

// .versionrc.js
module.exports = {
  bumpFiles: [
    {
      filename: 'package.json',
    },
    {
      filename: 'app.json',
      updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo'),
    },
    {
      filename: 'app.json',
      updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo/android'),
    },
    {
      filename: 'app.json',
      updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo/ios'),
    }
  ]
};

If you're using the bare workflow, you'll need a couple more bumpers to keep your native project config files in sync:

// .versionrc.js
const sdkVersion = '37.0.0';  // or pull from app.json

module.exports = [
  // ...
  {
    filename: 'ios/<YourAppName>/Info.plist',
    updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo/ios/native/app-version'),
  },
  {
    filename: 'ios/<YourAppName>/Info.plist',
    updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo/ios/native/buildnum/increment'),
  },
  {
    filename: 'android/app/build.gradle',
    updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo/android/native/app-version'),
  },
  {
    filename: 'android/app/build.gradle',
    updater: require.resolve('standard-version-expo/android/native/buildnum/code')(sdkVersion),
  },
];

To test if your configuration works as expected, you can run standard version in dry mode. This shows you what will happen, without actually applying the versions and tags.

$ npx standard-version --dry-run

Usage

Standard Version's version bumpers are pretty simple; each bump only updates a single file using a single updater. This package exposes multiple kinds of updaters, for different areas of the manifest. You can "compose" your own set of bumpFiles entries to suit your needs.

updater	example	description
<root>	3.2.1	alias of manifest/version
manifest	3.2.1	alias of manifest/version
manifest/version	3.2.1	Replace expo.version with the exact calculated semver. (recommended)
android	360030201	alias of android/code
android/code	350010000	Replace expo.android.versionCode with the method described by Maxi Rosson. (recommended)
android/increment	8	Replace expo.android.versionCode with an incremental version.
ios	3.2.1	alias of ios/version
ios/code	360030201	Replace expo.ios.buildNumber with the method described by Maxi Rosson.
ios/increment	9	Replace expo.ios.buildNumber with an incremental version.
ios/version	3.2.1	Replace expo.ios.buildNumber with the exact calculated semver. (recommended)

And for the native build config files:

updater	example	file path	description
native/ios/app-version	3.2.1	ios/<YourAppName>/Info.plist	Replace CFBundleShortVersionString with the exact calculated semver.
native/ios/buildnum/code	36030201	ios/<YourAppName>/Info.plist	Replace CFBundleVersion with the method described by Maxi Rosson.
native/ios/buildnum/increment	8	ios/<YourAppName>/Info.plist	Replace CFBundleVersion with an incremental version.
native/ios/buildnum/version	3.2.1	ios/<YourAppName>/Info.plist	Replace CFBundleVersion with the exact calculated semver. (recommended)
native/android/app-version	3.2.1	android/app/build.gradle	Replace versionName with the exact calculated semver.
native/android/buildnum/code	36030201	android/app/build.gradle	Replace versionCode with the method described by Maxi Rosson. (recommended)
native/android/buildnum/increment	8	android/app/build.gradle	Replace versionCode with an incremental version.

Note that the native/{ios,android}/buildnum/code bumpers are only supported in .versionrc.js file, not in .versionrc or .versionrc.json files. Since a bumper only operates on one file, the Expo manifest is unavailable to the bumper when it's operating on a native build config file. Because of this, you must provide the Expo SDK version via javascript (see example above).

However, this means that you can also use these bumpers with non-Expo React Native projects, and even plain Android projects, simply by supplying the minimum Android API level rather than the Expo SDK version.

Version code

Semver is one of the most popular versioning methods; it generates a string with a syntax that even humans can read. Unfortunately, in Android, we are limited to use a numeric versionCode as version. The version code uses an approach from Maxi Rosson to calculate a numeric value from semver. It's a deterministic solution that removes some of the ambiguity of incremental build numbers, like security-patching old versions.

The method initially uses the Android minimum API level. For Expo, we replaced this with the major Expo SDK version.

with ❤️ byCedric