Trigger builds from CI

Learn how to trigger builds on EAS for your app from a CI environment such as GitHub Actions and more.

This document outlines how to trigger builds on EAS for your app from a CI environment such as GitHub Actions, Travis CI, and more.

Prerequisites

Run a successful build from your local machine

To trigger EAS builds from a CI environment, your app needs to be set up to use EAS Build in non-interactive mode. To do this, go through the EAS Build initialization steps and run a successful build from your local terminal for each platform you would like to support on CI. This way, the eas build command can prompt for any additional configuration it needs, and then that configuration will be available for future non-interactive runs on CI.

Running a build locally will accomplish the following critical configuration steps:

• Initialize the project on EAS by generating a projectId.
• Add an eas.json file defining your build profiles.
• Populates critical app config properties for native builds, such as android.packageName and ios.bundleIdentifier.
• Ensure build credentials are created, including Android keystores and iOS distribution certs and provisioning profiles.

Run eas build -p [all|android|ios] and verify that your builds for each platform complete successfully. Then, continue with the below steps for implementing EAS Build on CI.

If you haven't done this yet, see the Create your first build guide and return here when you're ready.

Using EAS Workflows

EAS Workflows is a CI/CD service from Expo that allows you to run builds, and many other types of jobs, on EAS. You can use EAS Workflows to automate your development and release processes, like creating development builds or automatically building and submitting to the app stores.

To create a build with EAS Workflows, start by adding the following code in .eas/workflows/build.yml:

name: Build

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  build_android:
    name: Build Android App
    type: build
    params:
      platform: android
  build_ios:
    name: Build iOS App
    type: build
    params:
      platform: ios

When a commit is pushed to the main branch, this workflow will create Android and iOS builds. You can learn how to modify this workflow and sequence other types of jobs in the EAS Workflows documentation.

Configuring your app for other CI services

Provide a personal access token to authenticate with your Expo account on CI

Next, we need to ensure that we can authenticate ourselves on CI as the owner of the app. This is possible by storing a personal access token in the EXPO_TOKEN environment variable in the CI settings.

See personal access tokens to learn how to create access tokens.

(Optional) Provide an ASC API Token for your Apple Team

In the event your iOS credentials need to be repaired, we will need an ASC API key to authenticate ourselves to Apple in CI. A common case is when your provisioning profile needs to be re-signed.

You will need to create an API Key. Next, you will need to gather information about your Apple Team.

Using the information you've gathered, pass it into the build command through environment variables. You will need to pass the following:

• EXPO_ASC_API_KEY_PATH: The path to your ASC API Key .p8 file. For example, /path/to/key/AuthKey_SFB993FB5F.p8.
• EXPO_ASC_KEY_ID: The key ID of your ASC API Key. For example, SFB993FB5F.
• EXPO_ASC_ISSUER_ID: The issuer ID of your ASC API Key. For example, f9675cff-f45d-4116-bd2c-2372142cee09.
• EXPO_APPLE_TEAM_ID: Your Apple Team ID. For example, 77KQ969CHE.
• EXPO_APPLE_TEAM_TYPE: Your Apple Team Type. Valid types are IN_HOUSE, COMPANY_OR_ORGANIZATION, or INDIVIDUAL.

Trigger new builds

Now that we're authenticated with Expo CLI, we can create the build step.

To trigger new builds, we will add this script to our configuration:

This will trigger a new build on EAS. A URL will be printed, linking to the build's progress in the EAS dashboard.

The --no-wait flag exits the step once the build has been triggered. You are not billed for CI execution time while EAS performs the build. However, your CI will report that the build job is passing only if triggering EAS Build is successful.

language: node_js
node_js:
  - node
  - lts/*
cache:
  directories:
    - ~/.npm
before_script:
  - npm install -g npm@latest

jobs:
  include:
    - stage: build
      node_js: lts/*
      script:
        - npm ci
        - npx eas-cli build --platform all --non-interactive --no-wait

image: node:alpine

cache:
  key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
  paths:
    - .npm
    # or with Yarn:
    #- .yarn

stages:
  - build

before_script:
  - npm ci --cache .npm
  # or with Yarn:
  #- yarn install --cache-folder .yarn

eas-build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - apk add --no-cache bash
    - npx eas-cli build --platform all --non-interactive --no-wait

image: node:alpine

definitions:
  caches:
    npm: ~/.npm

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        name: Build app
        deployment: test
        caches:
          - npm
        script:
          - apk add --no-cache bash
          - npm ci
          - npx eas-cli build --platform all --non-interactive --no-wait

version: 2.1

executors:
  default:
    docker:
      - image: cimg/node:lts
    working_directory: ~/my-app

jobs:
  eas_build:
    executor: default
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run:
          name: Install dependencies
          command: npm ci
      - run:
          name: Trigger build
          command: npx eas-cli build --platform all --non-interactive --no-wait

workflows:
  build_app:
    jobs:
      - eas_build:
          filters:
            branches:
              only: master

name: EAS Build
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
  build:
    name: Install and build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 18.x
          cache: npm
      - name: Setup Expo and EAS
        uses: expo/expo-github-action@v8
        with:
          eas-version: latest
          token: ${{ secrets.EXPO_TOKEN }}
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      - name: Build on EAS
        run: eas build --platform all --non-interactive --no-wait