Custom Update Tracks

Bryan Oltman

Bryan Oltman

Founding Engineer

2 min read

Shorebird now supports custom update tracks!

Shorebird has long supported “staging” and “beta” environments for testing your patches before deploying them to users. However, now we have added the ability to create an unlimited number of tracks with custom names.

Shorebird does not collect any information about your users. As a result of our privacy-forward design, Shorebird has no ability to provide things like region- or group-based rollouts of patches, A/B testing, etc. out-of-the-box. However, we provide a rich API set to enable you to implement all of these from within your own apps. Previously, these APIs were limited to operating on a fixed number of tracks (“staging”, “beta”, and “stable”), but now you can use an arbitrary number of tracks and push separate patches to each one should you wish. This can allow you to roll out updates with as much precision as you would like.

To use these new features, first ensure you’re using package:shorebird_code_push version 2.0.4 or later. Update your pubspec:

dependencies:
  shorebird_code_push: ^2.0.4

Once that’s done, Updater.checkForUpdate now can receive any string as an UpdateTrack. Check out our package docs for more details on this.

For example if your organization has a longer multi-track approval process, or your own custom update process you might need more tracks:

final track;
if (user.isQa) {
   track = UpdateTrack('qa');
} else if (user.isDev) {
   track = UpdateTrack('dev');
} else if (user.isDesigner) {
   track = UpdateTrack('down-stream-test');
} else {
   track = UpdateTrack.stable;
}

updater.checkForUpdate(track:track);

Or for example if your app is required to change or disable a behavior within a specific region (e.g. as part of legal or compliance changes):

final UpdateTrack updateTrack;
if (user.requiresLegalUpdates) {
  updateTrack = UpdateTrack('legal-update');
} else {
  updateTrack = UpdateTrack.stable;
}

Note that the name “stable” is still special in the sense that it is the default. If you call updater.checkForUpdate() without a track argument, it will default to “stable”. There is currently no way to change the default track used by our C++ “auto_updater” code, however when the auto_updater is disabled, you can use whatever default track you like when calling checkForUpdate.

These new features are supported in every version of Flutter that Shorebird supports, and because this update only includes Dart changes, it’s even possible to even to start using these new features via a patch.

Shorebird allows you update your Flutter apps instantly, over the air. It takes less than 5 minutes to integrate and complies with Apple and Google store policies.
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