I've got a handful of side-project apps on the go at home, I've setup a Jenkins installation to check them out and build APKs, which I then transfer over to my handset and play around with.
I'm looking to release some of these freely on the market, so I need to sign them with a certificate and prepare the final APK.
Is it possible to do this from Jenkins? For example, could I have one build target that generates my "in development" APKs, and also have that target (or another) create the final APK files ready to go?
Any advice?
If the signing is possible to do automatically (by command line or similar), then the answer is "Yes".
There are several ways to achieve this, but firstly: Is there any good reason not to sign every build?
Signing every build would mean that you don't need any extra configuration to create a releasable artifact, and you know that what you test and what you deploy are the same things.
If you want to be selective about what builds you sign, two approaches come to mind:
Parameterized builds: These are environment variables that can be customized when you click Build now. You can add a flag that you later react on in a build step.
Add another job that picks up the artifacts from your main build job and signs them, using https://jenkins-server/job/jobname/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/ or one of the approaches here: How to access Hudson job1 artifacts from another job2?