DevOps and release
DevOps and release engineering
The pipeline between a merged pull request and a user with the update, for mobile and web alike.
Shipping is a skill separate from building, and it is usually the one missing. Six apps on the stores means six sets of signing keys, provisioning profiles, review rejections, staged rollouts and the release you had to pull. I have done that part enough times that it is routine rather than an event.
On mobile that means EAS Build so a build does not need a Mac on someone desk, EAS Update so a broken screen can be fixed today instead of in three days, and the store side: listings, screenshots, phased releases, and writing the reply when review pushes back.
On web it means a build that runs in CI, a deploy to Cloudflare Workers through Wrangler, and generated artefacts like the sitemap and robots file produced at build time instead of maintained by hand. The test of any of this is whether you can run it after I am gone, which is why I set it up in your accounts rather than mine.
What you end up with
- EAS Build and EAS Update configured in your organisation
- CI that builds, type checks and lints on every pull request
- Store release process, including signing and phased rollout
- Cloudflare deploys through Wrangler, with environments separated
- Documentation for the parts that only run twice a year
Where this has shipped
LexVid
Inara Consultancy Services, 2024 to 2025
Continuing legal education video that keeps working on a train.
How it is built
Multitax
Inara Consultancy Services, 2025
Tax filing on a phone, where the form is a tree rather than a form.
How it is builtVM Academy
Personal, 2026
A multi-skill learning platform. Three repositories, one API, one database.
How it is built
Questions
Can you get our app onto the stores for the first time?
Yes, and the first submission is always the slow one. Developer accounts, signing, privacy declarations, data safety forms, screenshots at the right sizes, and a review queue that will reject you for something in the metadata rather than the code. I have taken apps through that from nothing, and I would rather set it up under your organisation so the keys are yours.
What is over-the-air updating and should we use it?
EAS Update ships new JavaScript to installed apps without a store review, so a bad screen is fixed the same day. Use it for JavaScript fixes and content changes. It cannot change native code, so anything touching a native dependency is still a real build and a real review, and pretending otherwise is how teams get confused about what is actually live.
Do you do this as a standalone piece of work?
Often, yes. Setting up build, update and release for an existing app is a well-bounded engagement with a clear end, and it does not require me to touch product code at all.
Tell me what you are building.
A sentence about the product and where it is stuck is enough to start. I answer every mail myself, including the ones where the answer is that I am not the right person.