things to do before exporting app to Android market and how to enable proguard (latest)

Question

What are the things to do for posting an app to the Android market when posting their first app to the market?

Answer 1

Most of it is explained in official docs, I'll add some points from experience:

1. Create your key store for App signing. Make sure you put some relevant info in your certificate if your App has copyright. keep a backup and guard it in every possible way, play store only accepts apk updates signed with same key as the original one, so does the device when installing an update.

2. Finalize your package name, make it unique , in future if you lose the signing key, you will have to re-upload app under a different package name.

3. Make a thorough review of code, watch out for test code, notes, useless comments and unwanted logging traces you might have placed there. Check your TODO items, run a code inspection from your IDE, remove any critical issues if found. Clear useless jar files, and resources. Also consider externalizing hard-coded strings to xml, so that you can add translations later on.

4. Check and validate manifest file, update version name and version code. Version name is shown when your app is listed in play store. Version code is incremented whenever you upload updated apk to play store. If its a major release you can bump up version name too.

5. Finally, build your apk in release mode, and optionally run pro-guard. If your app uses plain vanilla android API and no fancy external libraries such as RoboGuice etc, proguard will run fine. Other wise you will have to tell proguard to ignore classes under those packages. Proguard is optional, you can upload app without using it. Some IDE's have a nice GUI to do this.

6. Sign your apk with the key you created. Install it on test device, do a test run. Additionally, use emulator to test it across android versions. Take some screen shots, maybe a video too.

7. Prepare publishing material, write down few lines about your app, a list of features and any additional notes. Also, create a 512x512 icon image for your app.

8. If you have a website about your App, great, else make ready a valid mail id as a developer contact point.

9. Log in to developer console, upload apk file, fill in relevant screen shots, description, contact details etc etc. Save and publish. It can take anywhere between 2 to even 9-10 hours for your app to be visible in play store listings.

10. Your app url will be like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.example.myapp. Keep an eye on statistics, put keywords along with app name like "muzo - music player" , most people don't know "muzo" they usually search for "music player". Have your app reviewed, links pointing to your app improve its search ranking.

Answer 2

There is an excelent topic in the android documentation talking about how to prepare your app for release. The procedure is the same for your 1st or you 1000st published app.

Please see here: http://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/preparing.html

PS: And a +1 for you, interesting question.