Flutter(Andorid) Keystore path on different OS

Since the start of our project, we were having a constant pain in debugging/releasing android apk on different OS like Windows, Linux. The pain was nothing but to change the gradle file everytime after we pull/push project.

For instance, i am using LINUX, while my other teammate uses WINDOWS. Flutter docs about releasing an android apk asks in one step to ‘Reference the keystore from the app’ i.e. create a file named ‘key.properties’ whose contents in our case looks like this:

storePassword=**123
keyPassword=**3
keyAlias=key
storeFile=C:\\Users\\Varun\\Desktop\\***.jks

Now because my teammate uses Windows, hence the path of keystore is different, even though it is in same directory inside our project. Therefore, I wasn’t able to run the app on my Linux because gradle couldnt find this win path on linux.

So how to manage different paths based on the build OS?

I tried to find some code with which we can check the OS that developer is using in gradle script.
I then came to this question onstackoverflow that exactly satisfies my requirement:

How to detect the current OS from gradle

Great, the fun begins now.

Step 1:

Define three new paths for keystore for different OS in key.properties :

storePassword=**123
keyPassword=**3
keyAlias=key
storeFileWindows=C:\\Users\\Varun\\Desktop\\***.jks
storeFileLinux=/home/master/StudioProjects/***/***.jks
storeFileMac=/home/abc/.../***.jks

Step 2:

Edit build.gradle file, where you replace the following code:

signingConfigs {
    release {
        keyAlias keystoreProperties['keyAlias']
        keyPassword keystoreProperties['keyPassword']
        storeFile file(keystoreProperties['storeFile'])
        storePassword keystoreProperties['storePassword']
    }
}

with this code:

signingConfigs {
    release {
        keyAlias keystoreProperties['keyAlias']
        keyPassword keystoreProperties['keyPassword']
        storePassword keystoreProperties['storePassword']

        if (Os.isFamily(Os.FAMILY_WINDOWS)) {
            storeFile file(keystoreProperties['storeFileWindows'])
        } else if (Os.isFamily(Os.FAMILY_UNIX)) {
            storeFile file(keystoreProperties['storeFileLinux'])
        } else if (Os.isFamily(Os.FAMILY_MAC)) {
            storeFile file(keystoreProperties['storeFileMac'])
        }
    }
}

So you can see above, that i added condition for OS check and set keystore file path accordingly. The release process automatically picks the correct file path then.
The issue and pain finally resolves… 😁

Whola! Both you and I learnt something new today. Congrats
Clap! Clap! Clap!

Further reading:

1. https://flutter.io/android-release/
2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11235614/how-to-detect-the-current-os-from-gradle
3. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/gradle-recipes-for/9781491947272/ch04.html

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