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Comment by mrbombastic | Hacker News Reader

Oof I didn’t even know Google acquired fastlane, this is THE standard toolset for automating shipping iOS and Android apps, I’ve used it in every job I’ve had. I am sure Google is using it extensively internally as well. I am really hoping the maintainers can get some money for the value they provide. I would also hope Apple could provide some bucks towards this tool it is really necessary for making iOS delivery not a total nightmare.

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I've just started using it in my shop, and the tool is quite magical. A lot of work has gone into it, to the level where it will automatically search its own GitHub issues when crashes occur and provide relevant stackoverflows in a lot of cases. iOS provisioning specifically is horribly complicated, and the ad-hoc (pun intended) way my org was doing code signing before is archaic in comparison. Thanks Josh and the other Fastlane contributors for making such an awesome tool!

Is anyone doing something like this for webapps?

Not required. With mobile app development one of the biggest pain points is deployments to the app stores, it's a little easier with Android but on iOS it's an absolute pain in the ass and fastlane makes it a much more tolerable experience.

When it comes to webapps it's a much more straightforward process. A simple github action that deploys your site to S3 would suffice. On mobile you have a billion certs, profile, and other crap to deal with and fastlane handles all of that.

I don't think fastlane will have trouble finding backers and sponsors, because like you said many huge companies rely on it for deploy their iOS and Android apps, even when I was deploying a side project I used them. It's a crucial tool mobile devops and there is really no equivalent.

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