Question about mobile consumers: Is it necessary for mobile apps to

record-deployment

in non-prod environments, or can we just perform

record-release

in production environments? Context: We have several providers that were only running

can-i-merge

as part of their CI pipelines because they figured as long as the mainline build was passing, they could roll out to prod without issue. This was fine until mobile consumers needed those providers to verify against version*s* (plural) in prod. Now, they need to run

can-i-deploy

at least in those production envs. I work on the Mobile consumer team. I initially implemented

can-i-deploy

(every pipeline run, all envs) and

record-deployment

(only for non-prod envs when merging back to our

mainline

) steps in our pipeline, but now thinking about it, I don't know how much sense that makes, since consumers are running against our mainline with

can-i-merge

anyway. So the updated pipelines would be: • For story and feature branches: ◦

publish

◦

can-i-merge

• For

release/

branches: ◦

publish

◦

can-i-deploy

◦ Post-release to App Store and Google Play:

record-release

Yeah that seems sensible

what does “deployed” (or “released”) look like in non-prod environments?

Good question. We have a fairly large team that deals with 2-6 projects at the same time. Most projects use feature branches comprised of story branches that get merged back to

mainline

when the project is complete. A debug version of our apps can point to any combination of region + environment, but the app doesn't get deployed to an environment the same way an API or web app does. Testers can choose to download any version of the app from github that's been built, rather than the latest built version superseding the rest. So the deployment metaphor doesn't really fit. In an earlier question, I said:

Our current setup has us "recording a deployment" from

mainline

whenever we merge feature, bug, or story branch back into it. In this way,

mainline

serves as our non-prod environment(s).

But since most of our

providers

are using

can-i-merge

, they'd just be testing against mainline anyways.

yeah makes sense to me Eliott. There are no hard and fast rules really, it’s what works for you and your process. My view of your discourse on this topic so far is you have a pretty decent comprehension - so if this works for you, i’d stick with it!

Ok, thank you!