What is the best practice to manage the version of my android app?

Question

Actually my app is nearly so far, that some people can test it. Now I want to a version number for the app. Where should I put the the version.properties or is there a built-in mechanism?

Thanks

Answer 1

As to best practices, you can use a very nice approach to manage version code and name described here https://plus.google.com/+JakeWharton/posts/6f5TcVPRZij by Jake Wharton.

Basically, you can update your build.gradle to generate versionCode and versionName based on your major, minor and patch version numbers. (Code copied from the link for convenience.)

def versionMajor = 3
def versionMinor = 0
def versionPatch = 0
def versionBuild = 0 // bump for dogfood builds, public betas, etc.

android {
  defaultConfig {
    ...
    versionCode versionMajor * 10000 + versionMinor * 1000 + versionPatch * 100 + versionBuild
    versionName "${versionMajor}.${versionMinor}.${versionPatch}"
    ...
  }
  ...
}

Answer 2

Inside your Manifest you should have this:

 android:versionCode="1"
 android:versionName="1.0"