Rerun cloud builds in CI/CD with Appflow

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. There are many reasons why a build in your CI/CD pipeline may fail. Whether it’s an issue with your actual application code, a dependency issue, incorrect environment variable, or something else, a common first step is to simply try the build again.
Appflow is the mobile CI/CD platform built by Ionic that provides easy cloud native builds, deployment to app stores, and automations. With new rerun functionality in Appflow, users no longer need to go through the build setup process again to trigger a retry of a build.

Rerunning a build will use the exact same configuration and build stack as before, allowing you to confirm whether the error that occurred represents an actual issue with the code. You can rerun a build from the Builds list by selecting the three-dot menu of a build. You can also rerun from the build details screen.

Rerun builds will have a new build ID, build number, and appear as a new build in the build list. The output will also contain information about the original build generating the rerun.

Updating environments, keys, and configs between reruns

With Appflow, users can create custom build environments to store environment variables and secret keys. Then, these environments can be used during a build. Appflow also provides custom native configs to let you override certain configuration variables without needing to check in new code.

When a build fails due to an issue with an environment or native configuration, these can be updated in the Appflow Dashboard before retrying the build. 

For example, let’s say a build fails using your custom Production environment. After reviewing the build log, it’s because a secret key was incorrect. It turns out that your organization recently rotated out its secret keys. You can edit the secret key in your custom environment then rerun the build.

Getting started

Build reruns are available today for all existing Appflow users. To start building native apps in the cloud with Appflow, click here to set up an account.