Chapter 15. Using App Center to build, test, and monitor apps
This chapter covers
- Getting started with Visual Studio App Center
- Setting up app builds in App Center
- Running UI tests on real devices in the cloud using App Center
- Capturing and analyzing user data including analytics, behavior, and crash reports
Back in chapter 1 we discussed the mobile-optimized development lifecycle that’s ingrained in all the mobile tools offered by Xamarin and Microsoft. It’s shown again in figure 15.1.
Figure 15.1. The mobile-optimized development lifecycle is a continuously iterating cycle of develop, test, build, distribute, and monitor.
In previous chapters we’ve looked at the first couple of steps in this lifecycle: develop and test. We’ve written apps and built unit tests and UI tests. Now we need to consider the remainder of this lifecycle, and to do this we need to take advantage of another tool from Microsoft and Xamarin called Visual Studio App Center. If you’re excited about DevOps (and I hope you are) then this chapter is for you. If not, this chapter should be relaxing after the intense learning of the previous chapters—it’s more about learning how to configure and use App Center than about learning new concepts. The end product should be worthwhile—a built and tested app set up for crash reporting and user analytics, ready to be released to users in the next chapter.