Mobile App Distribution

Compile, build and publish over FTP a Cordova mobile app for wireless distribution.

Table of Contents

• What is "Distribute"?
• Installation
• Command line usage
  • Commands
  • Version
  • Help
• Configuration
  • Common sections
  • Cordova section
  • Angular section
  • iOS section
  • Android section
• init command
• cordova command
• angular command
• wd command
• resources command
• serve command

What is "Distribute"?

Mobile App Distribution is a command line tool for distributing a Cordova mobile app or an Angular 2+ app over (S)FTP to allow its download and deploy over the air and. It also have many command for icons and splashes generation, a local server creation, and so on.

Installation

To make distribute command line available in your system you'll need to install mobile-app-distribution globally first. You can do that with the following command:

$ npm install mobile-app-distribution -g

You should be now able to run distribute via terminal with the following command:

$ distribute

Command line usage

Commands

Distribute tools have multiple commands to cover all aspects of mobile app distribution:

• $ distribute init: The utility asks some questions in order to create the config file for distribution process.
• $ distribute cordova: The utility launches all tasks for compiling, building and uploading a Cordova mobile app
• $ distribute angular: The utility launches all tasks for building, deploing and uploading a Angular app
• $ distribute wd: The utility creates the wd directory to upload on your FTP remote repository for the OTA installations
• $ distribute resources: The utility generate iOS and Android icons and splash from one single icon and one single splash
• $ distribute serve: The utility create a local host to test website or webapp
• $ distribute ios: [Coming soon...] The utility launches all tasks for building and uploading an iOS mobile app
• $ distribute android: [Coming soon...] The utility launches all tasks for building and uploading an Android mobile app
• $ distribute flutter: [Coming soon...] The utility launches all tasks for building and uploading a Flutter mobile app

Version

To see the installed version number run the following command:

$ distribute --version

Help

To see general help menu and available commands run the following command:

$ distribute --help

Configuration

To use distribute command you'll need to create a distribute.json first; you could fine some examples for Cordova and Angular distributions in examples directory.

Some sections in distribute.json, like app or buildDir, are shared between distributions process, while others are specific for a single distribution type process.

• Common sections
• Cordova section
• Angular section
• iOS section
• Android section

init command

This utility asks some questions to user and create the distribute.json file for make builds.

All docs in Init README.

cordova command

This utility launches all tasks for compiling, building and uploading a Cordova mobile app.

All docs in Cordova README.

angular command

The utility launches all tasks for building, deploing and uploading a Angular app.

All docs in Angular README.

wd command

This utility creates a new folder called wd that contains all files for wireless distribution repository, ready to manually upload on FTP repo.

All docs in Wireless Distribution README.

resources command

This utility creates icons and splashes for iOS and Android platforms from one icon and one splash.

All docs in Resources README.

serve command

This utility creates and starts a local web server to test every single page application, like a Cordova www folder.

All docs in Serve README.