Flavors

While in development, the app may need to be released in defferent types (free/premium). These type of releases can be contrlled by flavors.

By using flavors, launcher icon, name and other variables can be organized specificaly for a particular release.

Instructions

Inorder to define flavors for android app, we need to define the type of builds (release, alpha)

buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled true
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
            signingConfig signingConfigs.release
        }
//        debug {
//            applicationIdSuffix ".debug"
//            versionNameSuffix "-debug"
//            signingConfig signingConfigs.debug
//            minifyEnabled = false
//        }
//        beta {
//            applicationIdSuffix ".beta"
//            versionNameSuffix "-beta"
//            signingConfig signingConfigs.release
//            minifyEnabled = true
//        }
    }

Then define the flavors for the release Create dimension and add the release types to the dimension.

flavorDimensions 'default'
    productFlavors {
        alpha_release {
            dimension = 'default'
            applicationId = 'com.area51.alpha_release'
            manifestPlaceholders = [appName: "Alpha Release"]
            versionCode = 10003
            versionName = '0.0.3'
            targetSdkVersion 29
            signingConfig signingConfigs.release
        }
        beta_release {
            dimension = 'default'
            applicationId = 'com.area51.beta_release'
            manifestPlaceholders = [appName: "Beta Release"]
            versionCode = 10004
            versionName = '0.0.4'
            targetSdkVersion 29
            signingConfig signingConfigs.release
        }
    }

To define app name from flavors, Create different app names, create strings.xml with same key in beta_release/src/values/strings.xml

<resources>
    <string name="textViewLabel">Beta Release</string>
</resources>

in alpha_release/src/values/strings.xml

<resources>
    <string name="textViewLabel">Alpha Release</string>
</resources>

OR

In manifest

<application
        android:allowBackup="true"
        android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
        android:label="${appName}"
        android:roundIcon="@mipmap/ic_launcher_round"
        android:supportsRtl="true"
        android:theme="@style/AppTheme">
        <activity
            android:name=".MainActivity"
            android:label="${appName}">

In app.build

productFlavors {
        alpha_release {
            dimension = 'default'
            applicationId = 'com.area51.alpha_release'
            manifestPlaceholders = [appName: "Alpha Release"]
            versionCode = 10003
            versionName = '0.0.3'
            targetSdkVersion 29
            signingConfig signingConfigs.release
        }
     }

References

• Link 1
• Link 2
• Link 3