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cyberaxyesterday at 9:04 PM4 repliesview on HN

Incorrect. You can (if you really want to) build an Android app without having any Google tools.

But even if you don't want to do any crazy stuff, Android SDK itself is just a bunch of Gradle scripts and Java apps. You can download and install them without any GUI in the way.

This is very common in CI/CD environments. Google provides a handy tool for that: https://developer.android.com/tools

Sorry, but Android and iOS are simply incomparable in their quality. Android SDK is a high-quality tool for developers that provides all the expected interfaces.

iOS SDK is a lock-in GUI hell that requires you to use a shitty macOS-only tool to even _upload_ apps to Apple Store. Never mind doing headless builds in CI/CD. Why that tool is shitty? It uses its own protocol for upload and doesn't do proper PMTU, so if you have a misconfigured MTU somewhere in the chain between you and Apple, uploads will just silently hang.

Edit: D'Oh, the correct URL for the sdkmanager is: https://developer.android.com/tools/sdkmanager


Replies

Terrettatoday at 7:52 AM

On the contrary, commit your code to your GitHub repo, triggering Xcode cloud build to take it from there, build, test, deploy to TestFlight or store.

Found a bug while backpacking Sardinia? Edit the GitHub repo source on your phone, commit... hey, new build shipped.

See the App Store Connect mode: https://developer.apple.com/xcode-cloud/

manwe150yesterday at 9:09 PM

Just to nit pick a bit, that link is for Android Studio and downloads from the "Google for Developers" website, then instructs how to install and manage the the command line tools using the GUI

thejazzmantoday at 12:55 AM

Not trying to argue but you can indeed pretty much completely avoid Xcode at this point. I’ve been doing it the past few weeks, including pushing to my phone and AppStore connect

Klonoartoday at 10:14 AM

You can definitely avoid Xcode, what are you talking about?