Auto increment version code in Android app

Question

is there a way to auto-increment the version code each time you build an Android application in Eclipse?

According to http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/v

Answer 1

Receipe:

To automatically have the android:versionCode attribute of manifest element in AndroidManifest.xml set to the current time (from epoch in seconds, obtained from unix shell) everytime you run a build, add this to your -pre-build target in custom_rules.xml Android file.

Confirmation Test:

Obtain the versionCode attribute of the generated apk file, using the following shell command from your Android project directory :

$ANDROID_SDK/build-tools/20.0.0/aapt dump badging bin/.apk | grep versionCode

and compare it to the current date returned from the shell command: date +%s The difference should equal the period of time in seconds between the two confirmation steps above.

Advantages of this approach:

1. Regardless of whether the build is started from command line or Eclipse, it will update the versionCode.
2. The versionCode is guaranteed to be unique and increasing for each build
3. The versionCode can be reverse-engineered into an approximate build time if you need it
4. The above script replaces any present value of versionCode, even 0 and doesn't require a macro place holder (such as -build_id-).
5. Because the value is updated in the AndroidManifest.xml file, you can check it in to version control and it will retain the actual value, not some macro (such as -build_id-).