Under buildTypes you’ll see this: buildTypes Ī flavor dimension is nothing but a group of product flavors. If you’re a React Native dev, you can provide the desired variant from the command line.

You can select the build variant from Android studio. This will result in 6 build variants:Īs a developer, you’ll run the debug variants from your IDE. A third example: an Uber-like app might have a driver version and a client version.īuilding on the last example, you’ll have 4 build variants of this Uber-like app:īuilding on the dev/prod example, we can also add a third product flavor (let’s call it test ) which will connect to the staging environment and will also have a different package name. There are other cases, such as creating a demo version of the app or a paid version. A product flavor example can be what I mentioned in the introduction: a flavor can be dev and the other one can be prod.You’ll use a release certificate for signing this app - more on this later. You do this from Android Studio > Build > Generate signed bundle/APK. However, if you are distributing your app to any kind of portal (Firebase/PlayStore) you need to generate a release build. When you run the app from Android Studio you’re running a debug version of the app. A build type will be either debug or release.

Simply put: Build variant = build type + product flavor What I mentioned above represents a Build variant. In addition, the developers and testers will be able to have both apps installed on the device at the same time. Each of them will have its own package name and will know which is the correct backend that it needs to connect to. Sometimes we need to be able to build 2 versions of your app: a development version and a production version. This guide will help you to understand the terminology, why we need multiple flavors for an app, and it will also offer a step-by-step breakdown of the process involved in creating everything.

Android studio build variants