How can I distinguish between STAGE and PRODUCTION builds on iTunes Connect / Apple TestFlight?

Question

Stage builds talk to stage servers, which are as identical as possible to production servers, for testing purposes.

Production builds talk to production servers, which store real, critical data.

These are builds that are essentially for the same application. However, the iTunes Connect interface will show you the following:

i.e. builds are uniquely identified by their build numbers and nothing else.

Therein lies the problem: nothing indicates to me whether any particular build is stage or production. How could I possibly be expected to remember?

So — how am I supposed to manage STAGE and PRODUCTION builds separately? Any thoughts?

p.s. Okay, I imagine the simplest way to do this is to create TWO separate apps on iTunes Connect — one for STAGE and one for PRODUCTION. You'd do this for any other hosted service so I guess there's no difference here.

Anorexia

Two separate apps is the way to go. – Spirit

after 5 years, do we have any such option on test flight? I am facing the same Stage/Prod issue. – Matheson

Answer 1

I have the same issue. We use the real testflightapp website for development builds/staging as iTunesConnect is too slow for turning stuff around.

If we are testing with external customers we just submit a staging build to iTunesConnect where the only difference is the server that our app points at. Once this testing is complete we submit the live version of the app for the review process.

It's a real pain. It would be nice if we had access to something that told use the app was running in a staging environment or is the real live version.

I guess we could tell by the provisioning but I'm not sure if that's possible? Is it?

We have scripts to automate the upload to iTunesConnect so that takes some of the pain out of it. But basically it's a struggle most of the time to keep track of what everything is pointing to etc.

Khalkha

Hmm! Sorry to hear you're facing the same problem. Just make another 'app' on iTunes connect. It's working okay for me. I call them 'alpha' and 'beta' — 'alpha' builds use staging servers and is never submitted for beta review. 'beta' use production servers and is always submitted for beta review. Ah. I would also like to know about your deployment scripts. Where have you found information about how to do that? – Anorexia

The ideal scenario is if the build itself knows what environment it's operating in. There may be security implications but in terms of development it's good — because it cuts down on the compile / upload time by quite a bit for each submission. – Anorexia

Have a look at github.com/nomad/shenzhen. It contains scripts to upload to testflight, hockeyapp and iTunesConnect etc – Khalkha

Fastlane is an even more comprehensive and customizable automation workflow tool (that makes use of shenzhen) is available here: fastlane.tools – Anorexia