Versioning your builds via version.properties file

suggest change

You can use Gradle to auto-increment your package version each time you build it. To do so create a version.properties file in the same directory as your build.gradle with the following contents:

VERSION_MAJOR=0
VERSION_MINOR=1
VERSION_BUILD=1

(Changing the values for major and minor as you see fit). Then in your build.gradle add the following code to the android section:

// Read version information from local file and increment as appropriate
def versionPropsFile = file('version.properties')
if (versionPropsFile.canRead()) {
  def Properties versionProps = new Properties()

  versionProps.load(new FileInputStream(versionPropsFile))

  def versionMajor = versionProps['VERSION_MAJOR'].toInteger()
  def versionMinor = versionProps['VERSION_MINOR'].toInteger()
  def versionBuild = versionProps['VERSION_BUILD'].toInteger() + 1

  // Update the build number in the local file
  versionProps['VERSION_BUILD'] = versionBuild.toString()
  versionProps.store(versionPropsFile.newWriter(), null)

  defaultConfig {
    versionCode versionBuild
    versionName "${versionMajor}.${versionMinor}." + String.format("%05d", versionBuild)
  }
}

The information can be accessed in Java as a string BuildConfig.VERSION_NAME for the complete {major}.{minor}.{build} number and as an integer BuildConfig.VERSION_CODE for just the build number.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

Table Of Contents