fastlane action and plugin difference

Question

I have a use case where I have to generate release versions for testing builds that follow a well documented pipeline playbook set by our testers. I already have a function that runs the logic in ruby, but I am considering creating fastlane action or fastlane plugin. Under my use case, is action sufficient or I should consider a plugin?

Answer 1

Fastlane plugins are similar to cocoapods pods:

• you specify plugin name, version, dependencies and other info in a gemspec file (podspec alike)
• you can have nested dependencies between plugins (Fastfile <- plugin1 <-plugin2 <- .. )
• you save them in a proper repo
• plugin is made of a set of actions or plugins
• you add a plugin dependency via command:

fastlane add_plugin [plugin_name]

So, it's better to use plugins if you need its actions in many different places and/or you need to build up a composite plugin hierarchy structure.

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Otherwise, fastlane actions are simple ruby files directly invoked from Fastfile, that can take input parameters, nonetheless see environment variables and can have a return parameter.

In order to 'clean' your code, fastlane actions could suffice.