

Show HN: Roboto, build and deliver your iOS and Android apps - phillipcaudell
http://roboto.build

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phillipcaudell
Hey all!

I've been working on Roboto for some time now after leaving my full time job
as an app developer and designer.

One particular pain point was getting beta builds to our testers and deploying
to the App Store. We worked in a team, so creating builds would require
checking out each other's changes, ensuring we had the right profiles on our
machines, and so on. Yuck.

You might be thinking "you need to use CI - Jenkins!", and we tried it. I was
at an agency with multiple apps on the go every few months, and getting
Jenkins set up and working in a way we wanted was a massive pain in the ass.
It was a hot mess of plugins, hacks and external services such as TestFlight
and HockeyApp. Other services that offered an alternative — such as Travis and
CircleCI — would require access to your private source code, signing
identifies, etc.

Paying someone else to compile your code made little sense to us, as we had
perfectly capable Macs of our own. Roboto is built so that we manage the bits
you'd want us to manage: hosting of the IPA and APK packages, installation
pages, emails, web interface, users, etc. You then run the "Roboto Worker" on
a Mac of your choice, which does all the compilation and source code
management locally. The upside of this is we never see your private data, and
your builds can make full use of your hardware — no sharing with other
developers

We have big plans for Roboto. What you see today is just the beginning. Whilst
I think sharing future plans publicly can sometimes set people up for
heartbreak (scrapped features, delays, etc), here's a couple of things already
in the works:

\- Unit test support. \- iTunes Connect and Play Store management (metadata,
screenshots, etc) \- Full build support for Android.

So that's a bit about why Roboto exists. I'm really looking forward to seeing
what you guys think! Happy to answer any questions you guys and gals have.
Thanks!

tl;dr: It's an out the box CI tool for mobile apps, TRY IT FREE TODAY.

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notduncansmith
Thanks for posting this, it looks like a cool service! I'd suggest mentioning
somewhere on the landing page both the tl;dr from your comment, and the fact
that you're a CI/deployment tool rather than a build system. I wasn't clear on
whether this was some sort of mobile development framework or what.

~~~
phillipcaudell
Cheers for the feedback - I'll look at tweaking the copy. I've had a sinking
feeling it wasn't as crystal clear as it could be (too close to it).

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andrewrice
Looks great!

On a side note, your web design made me smile. Subtly reminds me of the old
Trapper Keeper designs of the 90s:
[http://i.imgur.com/dGF57ff.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/dGF57ff.jpg)

