Show HN: Roboto, build and deliver your iOS and Android apps
roboto.buildHey all!
I've been working on Roboto for some time now after leaving my full time job as an app developer and designer.
One particular pain point was getting beta builds to our testers and deploying to the App Store. We worked in a team, so creating builds would require checking out each other's changes, ensuring we had the right profiles on our machines, and so on. Yuck.
You might be thinking "you need to use CI - Jenkins!", and we tried it. I was at an agency with multiple apps on the go every few months, and getting Jenkins set up and working in a way we wanted was a massive pain in the ass. It was a hot mess of plugins, hacks and external services such as TestFlight and HockeyApp. Other services that offered an alternative — such as Travis and CircleCI — would require access to your private source code, signing identifies, etc.
Paying someone else to compile your code made little sense to us, as we had perfectly capable Macs of our own. Roboto is built so that we manage the bits you'd want us to manage: hosting of the IPA and APK packages, installation pages, emails, web interface, users, etc. You then run the "Roboto Worker" on a Mac of your choice, which does all the compilation and source code management locally. The upside of this is we never see your private data, and your builds can make full use of your hardware — no sharing with other developers
We have big plans for Roboto. What you see today is just the beginning. Whilst I think sharing future plans publicly can sometimes set people up for heartbreak (scrapped features, delays, etc), here's a couple of things already in the works:
- Unit test support. - iTunes Connect and Play Store management (metadata, screenshots, etc) - Full build support for Android.
So that's a bit about why Roboto exists. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys think! Happy to answer any questions you guys and gals have. Thanks!
tl;dr: It's an out the box CI tool for mobile apps, TRY IT FREE TODAY.
Thanks for posting this, it looks like a cool service! I'd suggest mentioning somewhere on the landing page both the tl;dr from your comment, and the fact that you're a CI/deployment tool rather than a build system. I wasn't clear on whether this was some sort of mobile development framework or what.
Cheers for the feedback - I'll look at tweaking the copy. I've had a sinking feeling it wasn't as crystal clear as it could be (too close to it).
Looks great!
On a side note, your web design made me smile. Subtly reminds me of the old Trapper Keeper designs of the 90s: http://i.imgur.com/dGF57ff.jpg
